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NEW ORLEANS 



•y^^y^- 



NEW ORLEANS 



THE PLACE 



AND 



THE PEOPLE 



BY 



GRACE KING 

AUTHOR OF "jean BAPTI8TE LE MOTNK, SIEtTR DE BIENVILLK' 
"balcony 8TOK1E8," ETC. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANCES E. JONES 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1902 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1895, 

bt macmillan and CO. 



Set up and electrotyped November, 1895. Reprinted January, 
396 ; June, 1899; October, 1902. 



Gift from 
the Estate of Miss Ruth Putnam 
Sept. 14,1331 



Tforfaooli ^rfsa 

3, S. Cushinsr & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



TO THE MEMORY 

OF 




Introduction 



PAGE 

XV 



CHAPTER I. 
History of Mississippi River. 

Crescent City. — Pineda. — De Soto. 
Pierre Lemoyne d' Iberville . 



-De la Salle.— 



CHAPTER II. 
Colonization of Louisiana. 

Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. 
Story of St. Denis ..... 



• Pennicaut. 



14 



CHAPTER III. 

Founding of New Orleans. 

Law. — Duke of Orleans. — Mississippi scheme. — Specu- 
lation emigration. — Manon Lescaut. — New Orleans laid 
out. — Le Page du Pratz. — Immigration. — Dubois incident, 33 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Ursuline Sisters. 

Shipments of girls. — Contract with Ursulines of Rouen. 
— Madeleine Hachard. — Voyage across the ocean. — Arrival 
in New Orleans. — Installation in convent. — Our Lady of 
Prompt Succour. — New Ursuline Convent .... 51 

CHAPTER V. 
Indian troubles. — Marquis de Vaudreuil. — Charity Hos- 
pital founded. — Louisiana's first drama. — Jeannot. — De 
Kerlerec. — Swiss mutiny. — jumonville de Villiers. — Treaty 
of Paris. — Little Manchac. — Jesuits and Capuchins, Father 

G^novaux 75 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. PAGE 

Cession to Spain. 

Louis XV. — Due de Choiseul. — Cession to Spain made 
known in New Orleans. — Action of citizens. — Lafr^ni^re. — 
Delegation in Paris. — Aubry. — UUoa. — Madame Pradel. 
— Expulsion of Ulloa 89 

CHAPTER VIL 
Spanish Domination. 

O'Reilly. — Arrest of patriots. — Death of Viller^. — Trial 
and execution of patriots. — Unzaga. — Father G&iovaux 
and Father Dagobert. — Father Cirilo's report. — Galvez. — 
Julian Poydras 107 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Spanish Administration. 

Miro. — Conflagration. — Don Andres Almonaster. — Ba- 
ronne de Pontalba. — Padre Antonio de Sedella. — Western 
trade. — Visit of Chickasaw and Choctaw chiefs. — Caron- 
delet. — Revolutionary ideas. — New Orleans fortified. — 
Treaty of Madrid. — First bishop of Louisiana. — First news- 
paper. — First Free Mason's lodge. — First theatre. — Gayoso 
de Lemos. — Royal visitors. — Casa Calvo. — Treaty of St. 
Ildefonso ; France again possesses Louisiana. — Salcedo. — 
Free navigation of Mississippi demanded by Western people, 128 

CHAPTER IX. 
American Domination. 

Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana. — Laussat. — Transfer 
of government from Spain to France. — Transfer from France 
to United States. — Governor Claiborne. — American recon- 
struction. — Robin's description of New Orleans. — Refugees 
from St. Domingo. — P6re Antoine. — First Fourth of July 
celebration. — Law and practice. — College of Orleans. — 
Lakanal 155 

CHAPTER X. 
The Baratarians. 

The black flag in the Gulf of Mexico. — The Lafittes. — 
Barataria. — Efforts of state and national government 
against contraband trade. — Criminal prosecution of the 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE 

Lafittes. — English overtures to Jean Lafitte. — Lafitte's offer 
to Claiborne. — Lafitte episode. — Breaking up of pirate's 
retreat by United States authorities. — Baratarians at battle 
of New Orleans. — Lafitte at Galveston. — Dominique You . 187 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Glorious Eighth of January. 

Downfall of Napoleon. — Fears of British invasion. — Prep- 
arations. — Arrival of Jackson in New Orleans. — British 
fleet in Lake Bargue. — P^ngageinent with United States 
boats. — British enter Bayou Bienvenu. — Viller^'s capture 
and escape. — Jackson musters his men. — British forces. — 
Fight of 23d December. — Jackson's position. — Pakenham. 
— British attack of 27th December. — Eighth of January . 211 

CHAPTER XII. 

Ante-bellum New Orleans. 

Celebration of the victory. — First steamboat. — Faubourg 
Ste. Marie. — De Bor6 plantation. — Mademoiselle de Ma- 
carty. — Summer life under the ancicn regime. — Duke of 
Saxe-Weimar. — Lafayette. — American development, busi- 
ness, theatres, first Protestant church. — Buckingham's de- 
scription of New Orleans. — America Vespucci, Henry Clay, 
Lady Wortley. — Fredericka Bremer. — Epidemics. — Metairie 
race-track. — Under the Oaks — Duelling .... 252 

CHAPTER XIII. 

War. 

Capture of city by Federals. — General Butler takes pos- 
session. — Hanging of Mumford. — Federal domination. — 
Military government. — Reconstruction. — Fourteenth of 
September 298 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Convent op the Holy Family. 

Death of Mother .Juliette. — Gens de Couleur. — African 
slaves. — African Creole songs. — Zabet Philosophe. — Congo 
Square. — Voudou meetings. — Quadroons. — Founding of 
the convent. — Orleans ball-room. — Thomy Laf on . . 332 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XV. PAGE 

Conclusion. 

Fourteenth of July. — Moreau Gottschalk. — Paul Morphy. 
— John McDonogh. — Judah Touro. — Margaret. — Paul 
Tulane. — Tulane University of Louisiana. — H. Sophie 
Newcomb College. — Howard Memorial Library. — The 
Carnival. — All Saints. — Cemeteries. — Charles Gayarr^ . 354 




iivstatLon 




The Cabildo Frontispiece 

I'AGE 

Swamp Scene 5 

Spanish Dagger 9 

Palmetto Palm 13 

On Rue Bienville 14 

Lugger Landing at Old Basin ....... 19 

Banana Tree 31 

On Bayou St. John 33 

Court House in which Jackson was tried . . . . .35 

Villa on Bayou St. John 47 

Indian Weapons 49 

Sun-dial at Ursuline Convent 51 

Front View of Ursuline Convent 53 

Back of Old Ursuline Convent 58 

Tiled-roof House on Chartres St. 66 

Interior of Archbishop's Palace ,70 

Knocker on Porter's Lodge 73 

Indian Baskets 75 

Old Slave Quarters . , 78 

Tignon Creole 84 

Pomegranates 88 

xi 



xu 



ILL USTBA TIONS. 



Spanish Houses on Rue du Maine 

Courtyard of the " Old Baths" 

In the French Quarter . 

Old Plantation House . 

Old Spanish Iron li ailing 

Old Gateway on Kue du Maine 

A Creole Darky . 

Old Spanish Courtyard 

Spanish Dagger in Bloom . 

Iron Railing on Bontalba Building 

Doorway of Old Arsenal 

Gateway at Spanish Fort 

Dago Boats at Old Basin 

French Opera House . 

Transom in Pontalba Building 

Gateway in Cabildo 

Window and Balcony in Cabildo 

Residence of First Mayor of New Orleans 

Interior of Old Absinthe House 

" Mammy " . 

Cathedral Alley 

French Market 

The City Seal 

The Jolly Rover 

A Baratarian 

On the Levee 

Sword of Lafitte 

Grave of Dominique You 

The Gulf of Mexico . 

Door of Villa on Bayou St. John . 

Near the Battle-Ground 

Lamp on French Opera House 

Jackson's Monument . 

First Four-story Building in New Orleans 

Excliange Alley . 

Parish Prison . . . 

Lamp Post at Jackson Square 

In the St. Louis Cemetery . 

Mortuary Chapel . 

Study of "Ovens" in St. Louis Cemetery 



ILL US TEA TI0N8. xiii 

PAOE 

A Corner of the French Market 287 

The Duelling Oaks 291 

Caf6 at City Park 293 

Fourteenth of September Monument 327 

Cross in St. Louis Coloured Cemetery 332 

Sister of the " Holy Family " 334 

" Une bonne Vieiile Gardienne " . . ■ 336 

A Negro Type 343 

Stairway in Convent of Holy Family 349 

New Orleans from River 354 

Benjamin Franklin , . 357 

Tower and Portico, St. Paul's Church .,..,. 365 

" Saint John's " Steeple 369 

Dome of Jesuit Church 373 

Cloister of Christ Church Cathedral 376 

Tulane University 383 

Corner of Howard Library 388 

A Bit of Cornice 389 

Bceuf Gras 394 

Chapel of St. "Roche 396 

Tomb of the Ursuline Nuns, St. Roche Cemetery . . . 397 

Rear View of City . • 402 




WE personify cities by ascribing to them the femi- 
nine gender, yet this is a poor rule for general 
use ; there are so many cities which we can call women 
only by a dislocation of the imagination. But there 
are also many women whom we call women only by 
grammatical courtesy. Indeed, it must be confessed 
that, as the world moves, personification, like many 
other amiable ancestral liberties of speech, is becom- 
ing more and more a mere conventionality, significant, 
only, according to a standard of the sexes no longer 
ours. 

New Orleans, — before attempting to describe it, one 
pauses again to reflect on the value of impressions. 
Which is the better guarantee of truth, the eye or the 
heart ? Perhaps, when one speaks of one's native place, 
neither is trustworthy. Is eitlier ever trustworthy 
when directed by love? Does not the birthplace, like 
the mother, or with the mother, implicate both eye and 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

heart into partiality, even from birth ? And this in 
despite of intelligence, nay, of common sense itself? 
May only those, therefore, who have no mother and no 
birthplace misapprehend the impressions of one fast in 
the thralls of the love of both. 

New Orleans is, among cities, the most feminine of 
women, always using the old standard of feminine 
distinction. 

Were she in reality the woman she is figuratively, 
should we not say that she is neither tall nor short, fair 
nor brown, neither grave nor gay ? But is she not in 
truth more gay than grave ? Has she not been called 
frivolous ? It is so easy nowadays to, call a woman 
frivolous. In consequence, the wholesome gayety of 
the past seems almost in danger of being reproached 
out of sight, if not out of existence. It is true. New 
Orleans laughs a great deal. And although every 
household prefers at its head a woman who can laugh, 
every household, ruled by a woman who cannot laugh, 
asperses the laugh as frivolous. 

Cities and women are forgetting how to laugh. 
Laughter shows a mind in momentary return to para- 
disiacal carelessness : what woman of the present is 
careless enough to laugh ? Unless she be an actress on 
the stage and well paid for it ! (One never supposes 
them to laugh off the stage and for nothing.) Women 
can smile, and they do smile much nowadays. \V^ hen 
they are prosjDerous, the constant sight of a well-gilded 
home and a well-filled pocketbook produces a smile, 
which, in the United States, the land of gilded homes 
and well-filled pocketbooks has become stereotyped on 
their faces, and American babies may even be said to 
be born, at present, with that smile on their mouths. 



INTRODUCTION. xvii 

But the laugh, that "sudden glory" which in a flash 
eclipses in the heart sorrow, poverty, stress, even dis- 
grace, it has become obsolete among them. Smiling 
people can never become laughing people; their devel- 
opment forbids it. 

New Orleans is not a Puritan mother, nor a hardy 
Western pioneeress, if the term be permitted. She is, 
on the contrary, simply a Parisian, wlio came two cen- 
turies ago to the banks of the Mississippi, — partly out 
of curiosity for the New World, partly out of ennui for 
the Old — and who, " Ma foi! " as she would say with 
a shrug of her shoulders, has never cared to return to 
her mother country. She has had her detractors, indeed 
calumniators, with their whispers and sneers about 
houses of correction, — deportation, — but, it may be 
said, those who know lier care too little for such gos- 
sip to resent it ; those who know her not, know as 
little of the class to which they attribute her origin. 

There is no subtler appreciator of emotions than the 
Parisian woman, — emotions they were in the colonial 
days, now they are sensations. And there are no 
amateurs of emotional novelty to compare to Parisian 
women. The France of Louis XIV. was domed over 
with a royalty as vast and limitless as the heaven of to- 
day. The court, with its sun-king and titled zodiac, 
was practically the upward limit of sight and hope for 
a whole people. In what a noonday glare from this 
artificial heaven, did Paris, so nigh to the empyrean, 
lie! Its tinsel splendours, even more generously than 
the veritable sunlight itself, fell upon the crowded 
streets and teeming lodgings. Nay, there was not a 
nook nor a cranny of poverty, crime, disease, suffering, 
vice, filth, that could not, if it wished, enjoy a ray of 



xviil INTRODUCTION. 

the illumination that formed the atmosphere in which 
their celestial upper classes lived and loved, with the 
immemorial manners and language which contemporary 
poets, without anachronism, fitted so well to the gods 
and goddesses of classic Greece. The dainty filigr.ee 
of delicacies and refinements, the sensuous luxuries, 
the sumptuous furnitures of body and mind, the silks, 
satins, velvets, brocades, ormolu, tapestry; the drama, 
poetry, music, painting, sculpture, dancing (for, in the 
reign of the Grand Monarque dancing also must be 
added to the fine arts) ; and that constant May-day, as 
it may be called, on a Field of Cloth of Gold, for 
pleasure and entertainment — all this became, to the 
commonest Parisian and the general Frenchman, as 
commonplace and as unsatisfactorily inaccessible, as 
our own Celestial sphere has become to the average 
citizen of to-day. 

Over in America, it was vast forests before them, 
fabulous streams, new peoples, with new languages, 
religions, customs, manners, beauty, living in naked 
freedom, in skin-covered wigwams, palmetto-thatched 
huts, with all the range of human thrills of sensation, in 
all the range of physical adventure. This was heaven 
enough to stir the Gallic blood still flowing in some 
hardy veins of France. 

Women, however, like not these things, but they love 
the men who do. And, when the Parisian women fol- 
lowed their hearts, that they did not leave behind in 
France their ideals nor their realities of brocades, snuff- 
boxes, high-heeled slippers, euphemisms, minuets, and 
gavottes ; that they refused to eat corn-bread, and de- 
manded slaves in their rough-hewn cabins, — all of this, 
from the genial backward glance of to-day, adds a 



INTRODUCTION. xix 

piquant, rather than a hostile, tiavouring to the colonial 
situation. 

In Canada, the Frenchwomen were forced by the 
rigorous necessities of climate and savage war, to burst 
with sudden eclosion from fine dames into intrepid bor- 
der heroines and inspired martyrs. In Louisiana climate 
and circumstances were kinder, and so, evolution was 
substituted for cataclysm. 

Our city brought her entire character from France, 
her qualities, as in French good qualities are politely 
called, and her defects. But who thinks of her defects, 
without extenuations ? Not the Canadian and French 
pioneers who installed her upon the banks of the Mis- 
sissippi, imagining thereby to install her upon the com- 
mercial throne of America ; not the descendants of 
these pioneers, and most assuredly not those whom she 
has since housed and loved. 

Critical sister cities note, that for a city of the United 
States, New Orleans is not enterprising enough, that 
she has not competition enough in her, that she is 
un-American, in fact, too Creole. This is a criticism 
that can be classed in two ways ; either among her 
qualities or her defects. It is palpably certain that she 
is careless in regard to opportunities for financial profit, 
and that she is an indifferent contestant with other 
cities for trade development and population extension. 
Schemes do not come to her in search of millionaire 
patrons; millionaires are not fond of coming to her in 
search of schemes; noble suitors, even, do not come to 
her for heiresses. It is extremely doubtful if she will 
ever be rich, as riches are counted in the New World, 
this transplanted Parisian city. So many efforts have 
been expended to make her rich! In vain! She does 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

not respond to the process. It seems to bore her. 
She is too impatient, indiscreet, too frank with her 
tongue, too free with her hand, and — this is confiden- 
tial talk in New Orleans — the American millionaire is 
an impossible type to her. She certainly has been ad- 
monished enough by political economists : " Any one," 
say they, " who can forego a certain amount of pleasure 
can become rich." She retorts (retorts are quicker with 
her than reasons) : " And any one who can forego a cer- 
tain amount of riches can have pleasure." 

And what, if she be a money-spender, rather than a 
money-saver; and if in addition she be arbitrary in her 
dislikes, tyrannical in her loves, high-tempered, luxuri- 
ous, pleasure loving, if she be an enigma to prudes and 
a paradox to puritans, if, in short, she be possessed of 
all the defects of the over-blooded rather than those of 
the under-blooded, is she not, all in all, charming ? Is 
she not (that rarest of all qualities in American cities) 
individual, interesting ? Her tempers, her furies, if you 
will, past, is she not gentle, sympathetic, tender ? Can 
any city or women be more delicately frank, sincere, 
unegotistic ? Is there a grain of malice in her composi- 
tion ? Have even her worst detractors ever suspected 
her of that mongrel vice, — meanness? 

And finally, in misfortune and sorrow — and it does 
seem at times that she has known both beyond her 
deserts — has she ever known them beyond her strength? 
Nay, does she not belong to that full-hearted race of 
women who, when cast by fate upon misfortune, re- 
bound from the contact, fresher, stronger, more vigor- 
ous than ever? And in })utting sorrows and misfort- 
unes behind her, to fulfil her role in civic functions, 
does she not appear what she is essentially, a city of 



INTRODUCTION. 



XXI 



blood and distinction, " grande dame," and, when occa- 
sions demand, grande dame en grande tenue ? And, 
outranked hopelessly as she is now in wealth and pop- 
ulation, is there a city in the Union that can take pre- 
cedence of her as graciously, and as gracefully, as she 
can yield it ? 

The world foreign to France was amazed at the 
heroism displayed by the delicate ladies of the Court of 
Louis XVI., stej)ping from tlie gateway of the Concier- 
gerie to the tumbrels of the guillotine ; passing from 
their erring mortality of earth to the bar of heaven's 
immortal justice, with a firmness and composure that 
unnerved their executioners. All the world was aston- 
ished, except themselves ; for they at least knew the 
qualities of their defects. 





T-'H- 



CHAPTER I. 



"Voici mon fleuve aux vagues solennelles: 
En demi-lune il Se courbe en passant, 
Et la cite, comme un aiglon naissant, 

A son flanc gauche etend ses jeunes ailes." 

— Alfred Mercier. 

"TN the continuity of a city which has a historical 
-*- foundation and a historical past, there is much 
secular consolation for the transitoriness of human life. 
To the true city-born, city-bred heart, nothing less 
than the city itself is home, and nothing less than the 
city is family ; and, more than in our hearts, do we 
look in the city for the memorials that keep our dead 
in vital reach of us. Here they worked, walked, talked, 
frequented ; here they mused, even as we are musing ; 
liere they met their adventures of love, their triumphs, 
their failures ; here they sowed and reaped their 
religion and politics, held meetings, dispensed elo- 
quence, protested, commented, even as we are doing 
now, committing follies and heroisms. Through these 
streets they were carried in their nurses' arms ; through 
these streets they were carried in their coffins. These 
stars, passing over these heavens, passed so for them ; 
and these seasons, by local promises and disappoint- 
ments so personally our own, sped by the same for 

1 



2 NEW ORLEANS. 

them, marking off their springs, summers, autumns, 
and winters, of content and discontent. As we walk 
along the banquettes, our steps feel their footprints, 
and even the houses about us, new and fresh, and 
ignoble heirs as we hold them to be of respected 
ruins, with kindly loyalty to site, still throw down 
ancestral tokens to us. And not only the city inani- 
mate, if as such it can be called inanimate, but the 
city animate, — the people, — how it eternalizes us to 
ourselves, to one another, old, young, white, black, 
free, slave ; here we stand linked together, by name 
and circumstance, by affiliation and interdependence, 
by love and hate, justice and injustice, virtue and 
crime, indisputable sequences in the grand logic of 
humanity, binding one another, generation by genera- 
tion, to generation and generation, until the youngest 
baby hand of to-day can clasp its way back to its first 
city parent, to the city founder, Bienville himself, — 
and from him, linking on to what a civic pedigree ! 
Enumerating them haphazard : La Salle, Louis XIV., 
Marquette, Joliet, Colbert, Pontchartrain, Iberville, the 
Regent, Louis XV., Carlos III., the great Napoleon, 
the great Jefferson. 

It is not entirely a disadvantage to be born a mem- 
ber of a small isolated metropolis, instead of a great 
central one. If the seed of its population be good 
and strong, if the geographical situation be a fortunate 
one, if the detachment from, and connection with, the 
civilized world be nicely adjusted, the former being 
definite and the latter difficult (and surely these condi- 
tions were met with a century and a half ago on the 
banks of the Mississippi), there follows for the smaller 
metropolis a freedom of development, with a resultant 



NEW ORLEANS. 3 

clearness of character, which is as great a gain for a 
city as for an individuaL In such a smaller mother- 
city, individual acts assume an importance, individual 
lives an intrinsic value, which it woukl be absurd to 
attribute to inhabitants of a great centre ; our gods 
seem closer to us, our fates more personal ; we come 
nearer than they to having our great ones, our mar- 
tyrs and heroes, and we can be bolder in our convic- 
tion of having them, and we can have the naivete, 
despite ridicule, to express this conviction. It were 
a poor New Orleanian, indeed, who could not ennoble 
a hundred street corners, at least (if the city were so 
minded and so dowered with wealth) with statues of 
good and great men and women of our own produc- 
tion. And we can show saints and martyrs, even 
now in our midst, than whom, we think, palms never 
crowned worthier ! 

It is called the Crescent City, the Mississippi River, 
in its incessant travail of building and destroying, 
having here shaped its banks into the concave and 
convex edges of the moon in its first quarter. The 
great river is the city's stream of destiny, feared and 
loved, dreaded and worshipped ; it seems at times, when 
its gigantic yellow floods rise high above the level of 
the land, threatening momentarily to rend like cobwebs 
the stout levees that withstand it, — it seems then like 
some huge, pitiless, tawny lion of the desert, playing 
with a puny victim in its paw. And then, again, 
flowing in opulent strength, laden with beneficence 
and wealth, through its crescent harbor, — it seems a 
dear giant Hermes, tenderly resting the metropolis, 
like an infant, on his shoulder. 

Could we penetrate to the secret archives of the 



4 NEW ORLEANS. 

Mississippi, the private chronicles of its making, the 
atmospheric, tidal, and volcanic episodes in its majestic 
evolution, what a drama of nature would be unfolded ! 
One that, in inflexibility of purpose, and sublime per- 
sistence of effort, might feebly be described as human. 
And the Promethean contest still goes on. Still, the 
great inland water-power fights its way to the South. 
Ever further and further it throws its turbid stream, 
through the clear green depths of the Mexican Gulf ; 
ever firmer and surer advances its yellow banks against 
the rushing, raging, curling breakers ; still ever, year 
by year, fixing its great, three-tongued mouth, with 
deadly grip, on its unfathomable rival. 

The political history of the Mississij^pi begins, char- 
acteristically, one may say, with the appearance of this 
three-tongued mouth, on the Tabula Terre Nove in the 
1513 Ptolemy, made by Waldseemuller before 1508. 
This map, traced back to an original of some date 
before 1502, throws us, searching for the discoverer of 
the Mississippi, into the glorious company of the 
immediate contemporaries of Christopher Columbus 
himself. The mind, as well as the heart, warms at the 
inference that to no one less than Americus Vespu- 
cius, is due the presence of the Mississippi on this 
old map, a record, perhaps, of the voyage of Pinzon and 
Solis, which he accompanied as pilot and astronomer. 

To Alvarez de Pineda, 1519, is ascribed the honour of 
the first exploration of the river, and its first name, 
Rio del Santo Espiritu ; an honour that would have 
remained uncontested, had the over-sharp explorer not 
praised his exploit out of all topographical recognition, 
so peopling its banks with Indian tribes, and decking 
them with villages glittering, according to the taste of 



NEW ORLEANS. 5 

the time, with silver, gokl, and precious stones, that an 
impartial reader is placed in the dilemma of either 
refusing credence to the veracity of the explorer, or to 
the veracity of the three-tongued mouth on the map. 
Pineda's fable of the golden ornaments of the Indians 
of the Espiritu Santo was the ignus fatuus that lured 
Pamphilo de Narvaez, in 1528, to his expedition, ship- 
wreck, and death in the Delta. 

One comes into clear daylight in the history of the 
Mississippi only with Hernandez de Soto. The river 
burst, in 1542, in all its majesty and might, upon the 




gaze of that fanatical seeker of El Dorado, as he 
marched across the continent. But it could not impede 
or detain him. When the blur disappeared at last from 
before his bewildered vision, and his gold-struck eyes 
recovered sight, and beheld his haggard desperation, 
he turned his steps back to the great river, and, hard 
pressed now by starvation, fever, and goading disap- 
pointment, he but gained its banks in time to die under 
the grateful shade of spring foliage, and find inviolate 
sepulture for his corpse in its turbid depths. 

A century and a half passed and the Mississippi 



6 NEW ORLEANS. 

relapsed to its old Indian name and to its aboriginal 
mystery and seclusion. The huge drift of its annual 
flood accumulated at its mouth in fantastic heaps, 
which in time, under action of river, wind, and sun, 
took the semblance of a weird stone formation and an 
impregnable barrier. " Los Palissados " the Spanish 
sea-farers and buccaneers called them, avoiding them, 
not only with real, but with superstitious terror. 

To the seventeenth-century colonists of Canada, the 
stream was, one might say, so unknown that when the 
Indians told of a great river flowing through the con- 
tinent, cutting it in two, they jumped to the conclusion 
(their wishes being to them logical inference) that the 
stream flowed from east to west, and so would furnish 
to the French their El Dorado, — a western passage 
to China. 

This false inference was the inspiration of that great 
epic of colonial literature, the story of Robert Cave- 
lier de la Salle, the Don Quixote of pioneer chronicles. 
His imagination, great as the Mississippi itself, turned 
its irresistible currents into this one channel, — the dis- 
covery and exploration of the new route to China. His 
enthusiasm, unfortunately, infected all with whom he 
talked, from the trader and half-breed at his side, up 
through church and state, priests, intendants, govern- 
ors, courtiers, ministers, princes, to the very fountain 
head of power and authority, to the king himself, mak- 
ing them all, in more or less degree, his Sancho Panzas. 
And at the end of thirteen years of such vicissitudes as 
no human imagination would have the fertility to con- 
ceive, the river was found to flow not west, nor into 
any communicable reach of China, but south, into the 
Gulf of Mexico! 



NEW ORLEANS. 7 

La Salle's ardour reacted, hoAvever, from any disap- 
pointment that tliis might imply, and soared into proba- 
bilities superior in thrilling interest even to expectations 
from China. In the year 1G82, standing on the desolate 
bank of the Mississippi, he, in the name of the king of 
France, took possession of it, and of its country, north, 
south, east, and west, to the extreme limit of verbal 
comprehension, christening the river St. Louis, and the 
country Louisiana. Through the sonorous sentences of 
his "prise de possession" shines the glittering future 
that dazzled his eyes. In easy reach of the treasure 
house of the king of Spain, the mines of Mexico, France 
had but to extend her hand at any time to grasp them, 
if she did not discover vaster, richer ones, in this new, 
undeveloped country. Already owning Canada and the 
great Western Lakes, this great central waterway and 
valley of North America, with its opening on the Gulf 
(the West Indian highway), gave France such grip 
upon the country that, by mere expansion of forts and 
settlements, England and Spain could be elbowed into 
the oceans on either side. Such a vision might have 
fired any imagination. 

The place La Salle proposed to fortify on the river 
Colbert, as he again re-christened the Mississipi^i, was 
sixty leagues above its mouth, where, he said, the soil 
was very fertile, the climate mild, and whence the 
French could control the American continent. Thus 
and then was the idea of New Orleans conceived. It 
was not granted the author, however, to give the 
idea actuality, the gods having planned the story 
otherwise. 

His determination and attempt, from 1684 to 1687, to 
found the city and bring his colony and stores to it, 



8 NEW OB LEANS. 

through its Gulf entrance, and not by way of Canada, 
furnish the misfortunes, cahimities, and culminating 
catastrophe of the incredibly heartrending last chapter 
of his life. The indomitable courage and inflexible per- 
severance he displayed could be overmatched, it would 
seem, only by the like qualities in his evil genius. 
One rises somewhat to his own sublimity of desperation, 
as, even after two centuries, one reads the relentless 
record of the ill steering that threw his expedition uj)on 
the coast of Texas, of his struggle for hope and life, of 
his attempt to seek on foot help from Canada ; of his 
betrayal and assassination. It is a wild and mournful 
story, as Parkman calls it. 

La Salle's idea, however, arose only more radiantly 
triumphant from the blood-soaked earth of his Texas 
grave, and the true spirit of his enthusiasm lived in the 
enthusiasm he had engendered. When the proper mo- 
ment came, his scheme was vital enougli in govern- 
mental centres to kindle into energy the will to give it 
another chance at success. The proper moment arrived 
in 1G97, when the Peace of Ryswick granted a breath- 
ing space to war-driven Europe. Louis XIV. was 
quick to seize it. Pontchartrain, the Minister of Marine, 
was as prompt in furnishing the means. Maurepas, his 
son and private secretary, was ready with the man, 
Pierre Lemoyne dTberville. 

Canadian born and bred, and, in the commentary of 
his governor, " As military as his sword and as used to 
water as his canoe," with all the practical qualities of 
character since chiimed as American, in primal fresh- 
ness and vigour, Iberville seems the man as clearly pre- 
destined to succeed in the New World, as La Salle, the 
mediaeval genius, seems predestined to fail in it. Iber- 




(^l;»6vVv\^\^ *^^|)%®T* 



NEW ORLEANS. 11 

ville's enterprise as we call it now and determination 
to recognize no eventuality but success, appeared in 
truth to discourage (as enterprise and determination 
have a way of doing) the very efforts of wind and tide 
against him. The expedition he led from Brest, in 1698, 
steered straight across the Gulf on its course, without 
accident or misadventure ; his ships anchored safe in 
the harbor of Ship Island ; and, from the very jaws of 
the tempest, his barges glided into secuiity tln*ough 
one of the dreaded palisadoed mouths of the Missis- 
sippi. And, as if still further to accentuate his festal 
fortune, it was on the Mardi Gras of 1699, while France 
was laughing, dancing, carousing, and masquerading, 
that he erected her cross and arms upon the soil of Lou- 
isiana, and reaffirmed her possession of a colony greater 
in extent than her whole European world. 

After exploring the river for five hundred miles, the 
nature and possibilities of the country gradually un- 
folded to Iberville, and La Salle's far-reaching scheme, 
for French domination in America, appeared in its 
true significance to him ; and he became the ardent 
champion of it. Discarding his predecessors' wild and 
erring calculations upon the existence of silver mines in 
Louisiana, he cared only for the military and political 
importance of the new possession ; and referred to the 
Mexican mines only to suggest the feasibility of captur- 
ing them at any time, with a handful of buccaneers 
and coureurs de bois, or at least of way -laying the gold 
and silver laden caravels on their way to Spain. La 
Salle's project of a chain of fortified posts along the 
line of the Mississippi and of the great tributaries 
from Canada to the Gulf, he supplemented with a prac- 
tical plan for consolidating the Indians into connecting 



12 NEW ORLEANS. 

links between the posts, and so, holding not only the 
country but the people also, to France. 

On the voyage up the river, the Indian guide con- 
ducted Iberville to the portage which crossed the nar- 
row strip of land between the Mississippi and the arm 
of the Gulf, afterwards called Lake Pontchartrain. 
A few miles below, in a sharp bend of the bank, was 
a small, rude, savage stronghold, that commanded the 
river; near by were some deserted huts. The indica- 
tions fixed the locality in the mind of Iberville, and 
of his young brother and companion, Bienville, as 
the proper one for the future city. 

But the Canadian first made sure of his country. 
He fixed a fort and garrison at the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi; established a strongly fortified settlement on 
the Gulf at Biloxi, held on to his harbor of Ship Island, 
and planted outposts at Mobile, to guard against enter- 
prise from the Spaniards at Pensacola. 

The waters of the Gulf of Mexico seemed ever of 
yore to woo the ambitious with irresistible tempta- 
tions. The spirits of the old Spanish adventurers 
were its sirens, and the song they sang of lawless free- 
dom, conquest, and power, turned many an honest cap- 
tain into a buccaneer, and maddened buccaneers, with 
dreams of empire and dominion, into pirates. It was 
the song of all others to fire the martial heart of Iber- 
ville. Gradually, he deflected from the La Salle idea, 
or bent it into an Iberville idea, — a French (or at 
times one suspects, an Iberville) domination of all the 
islands of the Gulf and the mastery of its waters. 
For such a scheme, a stronghold on the Gulf was of 
far more value than a city on the Mississippi; con- 
sequently, the establishment was removed from Biloxi 



NEW ORLEANS. 



13 



to the more accessible Mobile, which became the capital 
and centre of the colony. 

Magnetized by past successes against the English, 
into perfect confidence of future ones, Iberville ob- 
tained from his government a strong armament, and 
sailed with it into his new field of action. As a pre- 
liminary experiment, he captured the little islands of 
Nevis and St. Christopher; then, finding the English 
at Barbadoes and the larger islands prepared for him, 
he decided, instead of attacking them at that moment, 
to surprise and raid the coast of the Carolinas, as he 
once, with brilliant barbarity, had done to the coast of 
Newfoundland. But, stopping at Havana for a prom- 
ised reinforcement of Spaniards, he was seized with the 
yellow fever, raging there in epidemic, and died in the 
full vigour of his prime, in the year 1706. 




\ sATnetto 




CHAPTER II. 



TDIENVILLE is the man whom Louisianians place at 
-*-^ the head of tlieir liistoiy. In his day, they called 
him the Father of Lonisiana, and New Orleans is as 
incontestably his city as if La Salle and Iberville had 
not so mnch as thought of it. He was Jean Baptiste 
Le Moyne. A midshipman of eighteen, he accom- 
panied Iberville on his voyage of the discovery of the 
Mississippi, and fair, slight, almost undersized, his fig- 
ure formed no less striking a contrast to his physically 
superb brother, than his gentle, quiet, meditative face 
did to the rough, bold, hardy countenances of the 
Canadians and buccaneers in the same expedition. He 
was left in the colony by Il)erville, with the rank of 
second in command. A fever carrying off his chief, 
Sauvole, during Ilierville's absence, he assumed full 
command. Iberville, always strong in the favour of the 
Ministry of the Marine, secured the confirmation of 

U 



NEW ORLEANS. 15 

this position, and thus the young officer at twenty be- 
came the highest executive and sole representative of 
royal authority in the colony. 

The promotion was quite in the line of his imagi- 
nation, if not of his intention, and the intention of 
Iberville, in settling him in Louisiana. The American 
emigrants of to-day are no more aspiring in their deter- 
minations, nor determined in their aspirations, than were 
the Canadian emigrants of the seventeenth century. 
But the Canadian emigrant aimed at noble rank, feu- 
dal power and privileges. Thus, the father of IV)erville 
and Bienville, Charles Le Moyne, himself the son of an 
innkeeper of Dieppe, a thrifty trader and interpreter, 
while amassing land and fortune by the life and death 
ventures of a pioneer in Canada, aimed his ambition for 
his sons, and fixed their careers by giving them the 
noble surnames proper to seigneurial rights and estates, 
— de Longueuil, de Sainte Helene, de Maricourt, de 
Serigny, de Bienville, de Chateauguay, — and events 
proved him not a bad marksman. Whilst the younger 
brothers were still children, the eldest had served in 
France; had, with his Indian attendant, figured at Court 
as related by the Duchess of Orleans in one of her let- 
ters to her sister, the Countess Palatine Louise ; had 
married the daughter of a nobleman, a lady in wait- 
ing to her Royal Highness of Orleans ; and had built 
that great fortress-chateau of Longueuil, the marvel of 
stateliness and elegance of the day for all Canada ; and 
had obtained his patent of nobility and title of Baron. 
The little Bienville, an orphan from the age of .ten, was 
brought up by the Baron de Longueuil, in all the state- 
liness and elegance of the chateau ; and it is to this 
environment and rearinsr that we are indebted for 



16 NEW ORLEANS. 

that "tenue de grand Seigneur," which threw such 
quaint picturesqueness, not only over his personality, 
but over the city which he founded, as is noticeable by 
many a token to-day. 

Bienville, nevertheless, was a born coureur de bois, as 
Iberville was a born buccaneer. With a trusty Cana- 
dian companion or two, he paddled his pirogue through 
the bayous, and threaded the forests of Louisiana, until 
he became as expert a guide as any Indian in the 
territory. And, with his native Canadian instincts, to 
assist natural capacity for acquiring the dialects, habits, 
manners, and etiquette of the savages, he learned to 
know them, and thereby to govern them, as no Indian 
in his territory could ever assume to do. For twenty- 
seven years his authority over them was absolute. The 
stiff parchment and rigid sentences of government 
etiquette have rarely conveyed reports so redolent of 
forest verdure, freshness, and natural adventure as his. 
It comes to us still, in fragrant whiffs, even from the 
printed page, and one likes to dream that in that an- 
cient swarm of government officials in the marine office 
of that day in Paris, there may have existed some 
infinitesimal clerk, with — despite his damnable fate — 
an adventurous heart. With what eagerness must he 
not have turned, as six months by six months rolled 
by, to the belated courier from Louisiana, and the 
budget from Bienville. What a life-giving drauglit, — 
a Fenimore Cooper draught, — to the parched plodding 
mind ! 

It was not all, however, nor even the best of it, in 
Bienville's reports, nor in the reports sent to the gov- 
ernment by the facile, if unorthographic pens of his 
companions, young French and Canadian officers whom 



NEW ORLEANS. 17 

lall meet here and there later on ; for there is 
rennicaut ! The literary pilgrim comes to many an 
unexpected oasis in the arid deserts of colonial re- 
search, whose shaded wells turn out to be veritable 
places of dalliance and pleasure. Such a complimentary 
comparison, if ever manuscript suggested it, must be 
thought of in connection with Pennicaut's "Journal." 
At least, so it appears to the Louisiana pilgrim. 

Pennicaut was Ijorn in La Rochelle. He was to be a 
sliip-carpenter, but at the age of fifteen had the passion 
for travelling so strong in him, that three years later, 
unable to resist it any longer, he engaged, oh blessed 
time for passion-driven travellers ! for a voyage whose 
destination he did not know, but which ended in the 
discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi. 

About the same age as Bienville, and with patent 
congeniality of temperament, he was his constant at- 
tendant in his excursions and expeditions, and his ever- 
faithful admirer. Pennicaut could never have read a 
novel : he certainly would have mentioned it if he had, 
but that he knew what a novel should be, and that he 
had in him the capability of writing many a one, no 
reader of his " Journal " can doubt for an instant. 

He wrote his adventures, from memory, years after 
in Paris, where he had gone by the advice of Bienville, 
in search of relief against threatened blindness. He 
had a hope that his literary effort would gain him the 
pension of the king ; but, in spite of our own earnest 
wishes to find the evidence, there is none that Penni- 
caut's hope did not die of the usual disappointment 
that awaits the hope of the literary. 

Besides Bienville's excursions and adventures, thrown 
into far better chronological proportion and effect than 



18 NEW ORLEANS. 

reality granted, and related with an eye to detail, of 
which Bienville himself did not know the fictional 
advantage, — we have Pennicaut's own adventures. 
It may be frankly confessed at the outset, that Penni- 
caut's ex]3eriences in the merry greenwood are of 
far more entertaining character than those of his 
commandant, and that (as he relates them) his services 
in the colony lead him into situations infinitely more 
thrilling ; and we are thankful that it was so. One 
cannot help being thankful in reading Pennicaut, 
that it was so, that such a rare talent for relating 
adventures was so providentially accompanied by the 
still rarer talent of acquiring them. 

The third hero of the " Journal " is that Louisiana hero 
of romance, par excellence, that doughty chevalier, 
invincible Indian fighter, and irresistible lover and 
founder of Natchitoches, the Sieur Juchereau de St. 
Denis. St. Denis came from Canada to join his rela- 
tives Iberville and Bienville, in their new and promis- 
ing field of fortune. After some independent brilliant 
improvisations among the Alabama and Louisiana 
Indians, he hit upon a scheme, — which offered, in his 
mind, the most entrancing reaches of peril and fortune. 
This was an overland trade, between Mobile and 
Mexico, a contraband trade, for the protective tariff 
of Spain prevented any other. It was during the 
Crozat regime in Louisiana, when the French capitalist 
was making the experiment, and proving the illusion, 
of a French monopoly of trade in the Gulf of Mexico ; 
and St. Denis soon obtained a commission, to be his 
own avant-coureur, in the enterprise. 

He was accompanied by his valet, barber, and sur- 
geon, Jallot ; and Jallot, as Pennicaut's friend, by pre- 



NEW OB LEANS. 21 

dilection in the colony, evidently obtained for the latter 
the permission to join an excursion, than which nothing 
could have appeared more tempting to a literary and 
adventurous expert. 

Arrived at Presidio del Norte, St. Denis found that 
the Spaniards had his reception all prepared for him. 
His attendants were detained in the garrison, and he 
was sent on to Mexico under military escort, to explain 
himself to the governor. 

But it is unjust to St. Denis to allow the telling of 
his story to any one but Pennicaut. For a real story, 
the facts could not possibly have had better authen- 
ticity. That which St. Denis, in those expansive mo- 
ments of the toilette which even the most reserved 
cannot resist, confided to Jallot, Jallot confided to Pen- 
nicaut over their social glass. It is safe to presume 
that any lacuna; that arose either from lapse of confi- 
dences between the master and valet, or lapses of 
betrayal from Jallot to Pennicaut, or lapses of mem- 
ory on the part of Pennicaut, writing afterwards in 
France, — the latter was fully able to bridge with his 
own sure sense of the exigencies of fictional archi- 
tecture ; and so, we will allow him to j)roceed, with a 
few necessary curtailments : — 

" Escorted by an officer and twenty-four Spanish horsemen 
M. de St. Denis voyaged over the two hundred and fifty miles 
to the capital of Mexico, where he had an interview with the 
Viceroy, to whom he showed his passports. The Viceroy, who 
was the Duke of Linares, after having looked at the passports, 
replied that M. de St. Denis had made a poor voyage, and without 
listening fuither to him, put him in prison. M. de St. Denis, very 
much astonished at such a procedure, was not a little put out by 
it. He remained over three months in prison. Happily for him, 
there were some Frenchmen in Mexico, in the service of Spain, 



22 NEW ORLEANS. 

who knew Ibei'ville very well. These spoke in favour of St. Denis, 
to the Viceroy, who interviewed M. de St. Denis a second time, 
and offered him a company of cavalry and service with the king 
of Spain. But M. de St. Denis, without being touched by the 
offer, replied that he had taken an oath to the king of France, 
whose service he would leave only with his life. 

"It had been reported to the Viceroy that, while M. de St. 
Denis had remained at Presidio del Norte, he had courted the 
daughter of the Captain, Don Pedro de Villesco. The Viceroy, 
to influence him, told him that he was a half-naturalized Spaniard 
already, since, on his r-eturn to the Presidio he was to marry the 
eldest daughter of Don Pedro de Villesco. ' I will not deny to 
you, my lord,' replied M. de St. Denis, ' that I love Doiia Maria, 
since it has been told to your excellency, but I have never flattered 
myself that I should merit marrying her.' 

" The Viceroy assured him that he could count upon it, that if 
he accepted the offer made him, of a company of cavalry and 
service with the king of Spain, Don Pedro would be delighted to 
give him his daughter in marriage. ' 1 give you my word upon 
it,' he added. ' At the same time, I shall allow you two months 
to think over my proposition, during which time you will remain 
here at full liberty to go where you please in the city. You will 
meet here many French officers in the service of the king of 
S^sain, and who are very well pleased with it.' 

"M. de St. Denis thanked the Duke of Linares for his kindness, 
particularly for the liberty he gave him ; after which, on leaving 
the apartment, M. de St. Denis was accosted by a Spanish officer, 
who, speaking pretty bad French, told him that he had orders 
to lodge him in his house, and to accompany him on his 
promenade in the city. M. de St. Denis, who knew by experience 
that to keep on good terms with men of this nation, one must 
load them with compliments and deference, replied in the Spanish 
officer's own language, that he would be very much obliged for 
the officer's company, which would give him the greatest 
pleasure. 

"The officer conducted his guest to liis house, which was a 
cottage furnished after the Spanish manner, that is, with curtains 
of linen, the walls all bare, and chairs made entirely of wood. 
He showed him a chauiber beside his own, only a little larger 



NEW ORLEANS. 23 

and a little cleaner, opening on the garden, where, he said, M. de 
St. Denis would sleep. 

" They were about going out when the cavalcador major of 
the Viceroy entered, and presented to M. de St. Denis a sack 
containing three hundred piasters, which the Viceroy sent for his 
use while he remained in Mexico. 

" M. de St. Denis, accompanying the grand equerry to the foot 
of the stairs, begged him to convey to the Viceroy how much 
overwhelmed he was with all his liberalities. After which, re- 
entering his apartment, he asked the Spanish officer to accompany 
him to a place where he could find something to eat for the 
money, and where he wished the honour of the officer's company 
at dinner. 

" The officer willingly guided him to a hostelry frequented by 
French and Spanish officers, where they had good cheer without 
being fleeced of their money, the price of the meal being fixed at 
one dollar a head. M. de St. Denis continued to eat there during 
the two months he remained in Mexico. He there became 
acquainted with many French officers in the Spanish service, 
who knew of him, without his knowing them, because most of 
them had been friends of Iberville's. He likewise made the 
acquaintance of one of the most considerable Spaniards in the 
city, who tried again and again to induce him to enter the service 
of the king of Spain. He was even invited several times to the 
table of the Viceroy, who gave magnificent dinners every day. 
Nothing that he had ever seen appeared to M. de St. Denis so 
rich as the Viceroy's service of silver. Even the furniture of 
his apartments, his armoirs, tables, down to his andirons, all 
were of massive silver, of extraordinary size and weight, but rudely 
fashioned. 

" M. de St. Denis was most careful, all the time he was in 
Mexico, to guard his words, to say nothing that could be iised to 
his i^rejudice, although every day he partook of the good cheer 
of the French and Spanish officers, who neglected no effort to 
attract him to themselves. They were no doubt pushed to this 
by the Viceroy, but they did not succeed, and this was what 
probably induced the Viceroy to give M. de St. Denis his conge. 
One day when he had him to dinner, he took him aside into a 
magnificent cabinet, into which M. de St. Denis had never 



24 NEW ORLEANS. 

entered before, and told him, since he could not be prevailed upon 
to enter the service of the king of Spain, he was at liberty to return 
to Louisiana, and that he could depai't with the officer with whom 
he lodged, presenting him, at the same time, a purse of a thousand 
dollars, " which," said the duke laughing, " he gave him for the 
expenses of the wedding," hoxnng that the Dona Maria would 
influence him more than he and his officers had, towards accepting 
his offers. 

" M. de St. Denis immediately commenced his preparations for 
departure. He supped with all his French and vSpanish friends, 
and bade them good-bye, embracing them all heartily. 

" While he was dressing next morning, the grand equerry of 
the Viceroy entered his chamber, and informed him that his 
Excellency had sent him a horse from his stables, to make the 
journey with. 

" Thnnking the officer in Spanish, expressing his gratitude for 
all the kindness of the Viceroy, whose magnificence and generosity 
he would make known to the governor of Louisiana and to all the 
Frenchmen there, M. de St. Denis descended the stairs with the 
equei-ry and received the horse, which was held by a page of 
the Viceroy. He exclaimed much over the beauty and value of 
the present, which gave the equerry the opportunity to descant 
uj)on the I'iches of his master, whom he elevated to the rank of the 
greatest kings of the world ; detailing the immber of his servants, 
and of his horses, saying that in his stables there were still two 
thousand handsomer than the one he had just given away, besides 
a prodigious quantity of furniture and services of sUver. 

"M. de St. Denis dared not interrupt him, although the dis- 
course had lasted over a half hour, and he was beginning to tire of 
it ; when fortunately the officer, who was to act as escort, called 
out of the window to him, that he must come to breakfast, as they 
were to start within the hour. The present of the Viceroy was a 
bay horse, and one of the handsomest M. de St. Denis had ever 
mounted. 

" Travelling at their ease, it took the gentlemen three months to 
reach Coahuila. Here they found Jallot awaiting his master. 
Jallot had lived all this time from his trade of chirurgeon, and 
had even gained a great reputation among the Spaniards for his 
cure of many diseases to which they were subject. M. de St. 



NEW ORLEANS. 25 

Denis and his escort lodged at the best inn of the place, where,- 
however, they would not have fared so well had not Jallot himself 
prepared their food. At the end of eight days, the governor of 
Coahuila gave M. de St. Denis an officer and six cavaliers to conduct 
him to Presidio del Norte. He also permitted him to buy a horse 
for his valet, which, although it was very good, cost only ten 
piasters. 

" Eight days after that they arrived at Presidio del Norte, where 
St. Denis lodged with Senor Don Pedro de Villesca. He had been 
tliere only a week when circumstances occurred to greatly advance 
his marriage with Dona Maria. Foiir villages of Indians, who 
were under Don Pedro's jurisdiction, took the determination to 
abandon tlieir habitations and establish themselves outside of 
Spanish territory. They loaded their beasts with the best of their 
movables, aiid commenced their march. Don Pedro was very much 
troubled by this, as he was partly to blame for the defection, hav- 
ing given too much license to his officers who were constantly 
vexing and pillaging the Indians, knowing that tliey dared not 
defend themselves. Don Pedro did not know what to do to put a 
stop to the movement; besides, no one dared go to the Indians, for 
the four villages formed a force of a thousand men, armed with 
bows and arrows. M. de St. Denis, seeing the embarrassment 
of Don Pedro, offered to go to the Indians himself, alone, and per- 
suade them to return. Don Pedro, embracing him, replied that he 
dared not thus expose him, for two of these villages contained the 
most dangerous Indians to be found anywhere, and they would not 
fail to kill him. 

"But M. de St. Denis did not trouble himself about that. He 
mounted his horse, and followed by Jallot, rode forth after the 
Indians. Attaching his handkerchief to the end of a cane, he 
made signs to them from a distance, and when he came up to 
them, he spoke to them in Spanish, telling them to return, that all 
they wanted would be granted them, promising them on the part 
of Don Pedro, that they should not be harassed any more, showing 
them the dangers they would have to face from hostile Indians 
outside the Spanish government, adding that the Sjianish soldiers 
would be forbidden, under penalty of death, to go to their villages; 
and that they need only follow him to hear this law laid down to 
the garrison, 



26 NEW ORLEANS. 

" The four chiefs did not ask any better than that they should 
remain undisturbed in their lands, so they and their people fol- 
lowed M. de St. Denis, who, much to the astonishment of the gai'- 
rison, led them to the Presidio, — the whole four thousand men, 
women, and children. Alighting from his horse, M. de St. Denis 
spoke a few moments aside with Don Pedro, who was charmed to 
take upon himself any obligation, for the governor of the province 
would have attributed the desertion of the Indians to his negli- 
gence, and would have so reported it to the Viceroy, who would 
not have failed to hold him responsible. Therefore, assembling 
all his cavaliers in the presence of the Indians, he published a law, 
forbidding them, under penalty of death, to go hereafter to the 
Indian villages, or vex them in any manner. He then exhorted 
the Indians to return to their villages, which they did, and have 
never left them since. 

"As has been said, this advanced greatly the marriage of M. de 
St. Denis with Dona Maria. 

" The wedding took place two months afterwards, in the village 
church. When the marriage articles were signed by both parties, 
Don Pedro went to Coahuila to buy wedding garments. M. de St. 
Denis sent Jallot with him to make some purchases also. They 
returned at the end of a month, and six or seven days afterwards 
the wedding was celebrated with pomp. M. de St. Denis gave to 
each of the Spanish cavaliers three dollars and a yellow cockade to 
wear on his hat. He presented to his wife a very handsome dia- 
mond which he had brought from France with him. The wed- 
ding lasted three days, during which the Spanish soldiers had 
great feasting and jollity, and they did not spare their powder for 
salutes. 

"After the wedding M. de St. Denis remained eight months 
with his father-in-law. Then, accompanied by his brother-in-law 
and three Spanish cavaliers, he set out for Louisiana, to make his 
report to the governor, promising to return for his wife as soon as 
possible. The governor of Louisiana, giving up all idea of an 
amicable trade with the Spaniards, built a fort at Natchitoches, to 
protect his frontier against them, and sent M. de St. Denis, with a 
garrison, to take possession of it. There, the Spanish brother-in- 
law and cavaliers bade M. de St. Denis adieu, and journeyed to 
Presidio del Norte. 



NEW ORLEANS. Zi 

" After their departure, M. de St. Denis fell into a profound 
sadness that he could not go with theni to see his father-in-law and 
his wife, Dona Maria, but the Spaniards also had established a 
fort on their frontier, and he feai'ed to be taken a prisoner, and 
expose his life in Mexico a second time, for the Viceroy had 
declared to him that he would never be permitted to enter Mexico 
again without an order from the king of Spain. 

" One day he was absorbed in his reflections, in the little foi'est 
at the point of the island of Natchitoches, on the bank of Red 
River, where he was in the habit of promenading alone. Jallot, 
who was in the woods amusing himseK picking strawberries, see- 
ing his master, watched him a long time from behind a bush ; and, 
knowing his grief, to amuse him brought him the strawberries he 
had gathered in a little basket. M. de St. Denis asking where he 
had found them, Jallot told him, adding that there were better 
ones in Mexico. 

" ' I should think so,' said M. de St. Denis, ' as the country is 
warmer, the fruit should be much better. And I can tell you, 
Jallot, that I have the greatest desire to cross these frontiers and 
go there, not for the fruit, but to see my wife, and my child, which 
is her fruit and mine. Although it is three months since Don Juan 
left, I have received no news from her or from my father-in-law, 
although I wrote to them by Don Juan. And I am in sucli grief 
that I am resolved to go and see Doiia Maria even if I lose my life 
in the attempt, rather than remain here, consuming myself in sad- 
ness, as I am doing.' 

" ' Why vex and worry yourself so long?' said Jallot; 'the route 
is neither so long nor so difficult as you imagine. I know all the 
roads across these forests and can conduct you to Don Pedro's with- 
out ever being seen by any one.' 

" ' You cannot think it ! ' said M. de St. Denis ; ' can there be any 
chance of my making a journey of twelve hundred miles without 
being discovered ? ' 'I know,' says Jallot, ' that I have made the 
journey four times without any mischance, and, if you wish, we 
can, on pretence of hunting, go up the river in a pirogue, twelve 
miles from here, and landing, continue on foot until we reach the 
village of Don Pedro.' 

" After thinking a few moments, M. de St. Denis told Jallot that 
he would confide himself to him, and it was for him to take all 



28 NEW ORLEANS. 

precautions to succeed in the trip, which might cost them both 
their lives if they were discovered ; that for his part he was deter- 
mined to risk his life, and to leave in three days, for that was the 
time he gave him to make his preparations." 

The journal details liow worthy Jallot was of this 
confidence of his master's ; how admirable were the 
preparations for the journey ; how successfully it was 
carried out. We do not need Jallot to tell us that 
M. de St. Denis could never have accomplished it with- 
out him ; we are convinced of it the moment the trav- 
ellers left the pirogue and planted their first footstep in 
tlie forest. They travelled by night and slept by day, 
subsisting on the game they — or rather that Jallot 
invariably — found and killed. They were two months 
on the journey, the last day of which found M. de St. 
Denis and Jallot reposing in the woods a league and a 
half away from Don Pedro's village. 

M. de St. Denis asked Jallot how he was going to 
manage to get into the house of Don Pedro without 
being seen. "We must wait," answered Jallot, "until 
past midnight, because, in summer, the Spaniards are 
up and about very late at night ; and then you have 
only to let me manage, and follow me. I shall get you 
into the garden behind the house of Don Pedro. The 
garden is enclosed by a hedge ; in one corner of it 
there is a place through which I used to enter at night 
to visit a certain pretty little Spanish girl whom I 
knew at the time of your marriage." M. de St. Denis 
fell to laugliing and said : " No wonder our voyage has 
progressed well, since our augury was so good. It is 
love that has guided us both." "Our fate," replied 
Jallot, " is very different. You are sure of finding 
in Doha Maria a wife who loves you : I am not 



NEW ORLEANS. 29 

at all certain of finding a sweetheart, who may be 
married." 

And thus they entertained one another until night- 
fall. Then Jallot took out of his bag a piece of roast 
venison, which he placed upon a napkin before his mas- 
ter; but M. de St. Denis could not eat. As for Jallot, 
who had a good appetite, he ate a great deal and slept 
soundly afterwards. M. de St. Denis was also too 
anxious to sleep, so he kept arousing Jallot every 
minute, telling him it was time to set out. Finally, 
seeing by the stars that it was midnight, Jallot de- 
parted on a preliminary reconnoissance. He returned 
at the end of two hours, and bade his master, who was 
storming with impatience, follow him. 

Walking rapidly, in a road between an avenue of 
trees, they reached the ditch surrounding Don Pedro's 
garden, crossed it, found the place in the hedge, where 
Jallot, by throwing down a fagot of dried brambles, 
mounted to the terrace inside, and giving his hand to 
his master assisted him to mount also. 

While Jallot replaced the brambles, M. de St. Denis 
strode softly into the garden. In the faint moonlight 
he saw the figure of his wife promenading alone. He 
went to her to embrace her, but she gave a cry of 
fright and fell fainting. Fortunately, M. de St. Denis 
had on him a bottle of the water of " The Queen of 
Hungary " ; he held this to Doiia Maria's nose and so 
brought her back to consciousness and to recognition of 
himself. She threw herself upon his breast. After 
embracing one another, over and over again, he took 
her, with his arm around her waist, to the little parlour 
overlooking the garden — the one underneath the 
chamber she slept in during the summer. 



30 NEW ORLEANS. 

After talking a little with her husband, Dona Maria 
called her father and uncle, who came and embraced 
M. de St. Denis. Supper was served ; but M. de 
St. Denis ate very little, observing which, and also 
how tired he was, the gentlemen soon retired, leav- 
ing him to his repose — where, as Pennicaut says, we 
shall also leave him. 

The next day his father-in-law took M. de St. Denis 
aside and begged a favour of him. M. de St. Denis 
replied that there was nothing he could refuse him, and 
that he was ready to render him any service, even at 
the expense of his life. " I would not make this 
prayer of you," said Don Pedro, " were it not that 
your life is in danger, as well as mine, if you do not 
follow the advice I give you." And then he told his 
son-in-law tliat he had received orders from the Viceroy 
to arrest him, should he, M. de St. Denis, ever come to 
see Doha Maria, and that an officer and twenty-live 
men, sent by the governor of Coahuila, had been 
waiting six months in the village to catch him ; that it 
was absolutely necessary that neither he nor Jallot 
should leave the house, otherwise he would be seen and 
taken prisoner to the Viceroy, out of whose hands he 
would not escape so easily a second time. " I myself," 
said Don Pedro, "• shall never arrest you, even should it 
cost me my life. Therefore, I pray you again not to 
leave my house, which no one has seen you enter, and 
where you will never be discovered, particularly in the 
apartments of Doha Maria, which no one ever enters." 

St. Denis promised, and forbade Jallot also, to leave 
his room. 

"What is surprising," Jallot related to Pennicaut 
afterwards, " M. de St. Denis passed nearly a year thus. 



JSTEJV ORLEANS. 



31 



only leaving the apartments of liis wife after dark of 
an evening, when he promenaded with her under the 
avenue of trees in the garden. He did not become 
tired, because they loved one another more tenderly 
than ever. . . . As for me," continued the valet, " I 
never passed a more tiresome time in my life, particu- 
larly in the winter, when it became too cold to walk in 




the garden. Sometimes, at night, when the door of 
the house was closed, I would sit by the fire with a 
great thin, ugly servant maid, called Luce, who was 
prouder than the daughter of the most celebrated 
barber in Mexico." 

The birth of a second child to Doiia Maria, and its 
baptism in her room, although conducted in all secrecy 



32 NEW ORLEANS. 

(St. Denis remaining, during the ceremony, hidden in 
an inner chamber), brought suspicion upon the house 
of Don Pedro. Under fear of orders from the gov- 
ernor of Coahuila, for a domiciliary visit, St. Denis, 
parting from his wife " with many tears on each side," 
left as secretly as he came. He and Jallot returned on 
foot to Natchitoches. The journey took them six weeks, 
and it was filled with all the adventures possible to the 
time and circumstances, or to Jallot's imagination, or 
Pennicaut's love of romance, — Indian and Spanish 
attacks, hand-to-hand combats, ending finally in the 
safe arrival of St. Denis and his valet at the French 
frontiers, mounted on chargers that they had captured 
from the Spaniards. 

" These," says Pennicaut, " are the details of the love 
of his master, given me by Jallot." 




(On'B^^yo« h^'^"^"?' 



CHAPTER III. 



"DIENVILLE had never wavered in his conviction 
-*— ^ that the raison tVetre of the French domination of 
Louisiana was but the possession and control of the 
Mississippi. This control, as 'he reiterated in every 
report, could only be assured by colonizing its banks 
and by establishing upon it the capital city of the 
colony. For eighteen years the founding of this city 
grew from the fair ambition of the youth to the settled 
determination of the middle-aged man. On his excur- 
sions from Mobile he recurs again and again to the site, 
between the river and the lake, shown to him and Iber- 
ville by the Indian guide. He and Pennicaut, as Pen- 
nicaut relates, traversed it often on foot, and he settled 
some Canadians upon it to make trial of its soil and 
climate, and, as far as in him lay, he made it the official 
portage of the colony, through which communication 
was made between the lake and the river when the dif- 
ficult entrance of the latter by mouth was to be avoided. 
It was twenty years before the opportunity came for 
which he was waiting. In September, 1717, Louisiana, 
by royal charter, passed into the great colonial assets of 
that company of the west, by which John Law proposed 
to scheme France out of financial bankruptcy into the 

33 



34 J^EW ORLEANS. 

millennium of unlimited credit. In February, 1718, 
Law's Pactolus of speculation floated its first shiploads 
of men, money, and provisions to Louisiana. Out of 
them Bienville grasped the beginnings of his city. 
When the ships returned to France, they carried back 
with them the official announcement that it had been 
founded, and named after the Regent, Duke of Orleans. 
What a picture flashes upon the eye with the name ! 
There is absolutely no seeing of Bienville's group of pal- 
metto-thatched huts by the yellow currents of the Mis- 
sissippi. Instead, there is the brilliant epoch of the 
regency, — that "century in eight years," as it has been 
well called — that burst upon France like a pyrotechnic 
display, after the protracted, sombre old age of Louis 
XIV ; when Paris, intoxicated by the rush of new life 
in her veins, staggered through her orgies of pleasure, 
arts, science, literature, finance, politics, — after her 
leader, her lover, the Regent Duke ; her fair flower and 
the symbol of all that the eighteenth century contained 
of worst and best, the incarnation of all that is vicious, 
of all that is genial, debased, charming, handsome, witty, 
restless, tolerant, generous, sceptical, good-natured, 
shrewd. Kindly adjectives are so much quicker in 
their services to describe him than harsh ones, anecdotes 
and bon-mots are so ready-winged to fly to his succour 
against condemnation, that one feels the impotence 
against him that actuated his own mother to invent an 
apologue to explain him, an apologue, par parenfhese 
that might have been invented also to explain liis Ameri- 
can city. "■The fairies were all invited to my bedside; 
and, as each one gave my son a talent, he had them all. 
Unhappily, one old fairy had been forgotten. Arriv- 
ing after the others, she exclaimed in her pique: 'He 



NEW ORLEANS. 



35 



will have all the talents except that of being able to 
make use of them.' " 

And what a role in that Paris of the Regent was 
the Mississippi to play, with her Louisiana and her 
infant city of New Orleans ? In truth, like Cinderella 
at the king's ball, she dazzled all eyes until the fatal 
limit of her time expired. Historians describe how 
the names of Mississippi, Louisiana, New Orleans filled 




the cafes where the new Arabian luxury held enchanted 
sway over men's minds. It is said that France never 
talked so much or so well as under the influence of the 
subtle stimulant, " which sharpens precision and subli- 
mates lucidity," — "le cafe, qui supprime la vague et 
lourde poesie des fumees de Timagination, qui, du reel 
bien vu, fait jaillir Tetincelle et I'eclair de la verite." 
And it may be said that France never had more to talk 



36 NEW ORLEANS. 

about, a more inspiring subject for facile tongues, tnan 
Law, his great scheme and liis evangel, " Riches can be 
a creation of faith." There was, of course, a claque to 
lead applause for it ; all the literature that could hang 
to it appeared suddenly on the streets ; wonderful 
books of travel and adventure in the New World in 
the Islands, as, in their geographical ignorance, the 
people called America ; and pictures — a telling print 
showing a savage paying a Frenchman a piece of gold 
for a knife ; — it all took. Love of pleasure begets 
need of money. Law had his time and people made to 
his hand. A wild frenzy of speculation spread like the 
rabies, and — but a satirical verse of the time rolls it off 
for us : — 



" Aujourd'hui il n'est plus question, 

Ni de la CJoustitution, 
Ni de la guerre centre I'Espagne ; 

Un nouveau Pais de Cocagne, 
Que Ton nomnie Mississippi, 

Roule a present sur le Tapis. 

Sans Charbon, Fourneaii ni Soufflet 
Un liomnie a trouve le secret, 

De la pierre philosophale, 
Dans cette terre occidentale, 

Et fait voir, jusqu'a present, 
Que nous etious des ignorants. 

II a fait de petits billets, 

Qui sont parfaitemient bien faits, 
Avec des petites dentelles ; 

Ce ne sont pas des bagatelles, 
Car il a fait et bien su tirer 

La quint-essence du papier. 



NEW ORLEANS. 37 

n a, pour les achalalander, 

A quelques Seigneurs assure, 
Que, pour leurs dettes satisfaire, 

Son projet etait leur affaire 
Car il voyait auparavant 

Qu'on ne le suivait qu'en tremblant. 

Mais depuis que les grands Seigneurs 

Se melent d'etre agioteurs 
On voit avec grande surprise, 

Gens, vendre jusqu'a leur chemise 
Pour avoir des souinissions. 

Les feranies vendent jusqu'a leurs bijoux 
Pour niettre ii ce nouveau Perou 

Passer dans la rue Quincampoix 

Car c'est dans ces fameux endroi 
Ou, des Indes la Compagnie 

Etablit sa friponnerie 
Chacun y vient vous demander 

Voulez vous bien actiouner ? " 



The map of Louisiana was parcelled out ; allotments 
made to this noble name and to that, to one great financier 
and to another. Estates upon the Mississippi! What a 
vista not only of wealth but of seigneurial possibili- 
ties to the roturier. The Mississippi, in short, was 
"boomed," as it would be called to-day ; and its boom 
reverberated until no imagination, the medium of the 
boom, could be deaf to it. Colonists were sent out, 
land settled. The public credit of the system demanded 
that the movement should not slacken ; that Louisiana 
should not stand still in the market, that it should be 
pushed until the faith which was the germ of the scheme 
was rooted. The rue Quincampoix did not flinch. Ah! 



88 NEW OBLEANS. 

the pitiless mastery of the thirst for gold has never 
been more cruelly displayed than in this artificial forc- 
ing of maturity and maternity upon a virgin country, 
to keep up the value of stocks! Emigration to Louisi- 
ana must be kept up, by fair means or by foul. Human 
beings would — faute de mieux, human beings at least 
could — be procured in Paris. The orders were given ; 
so much money per head. There was no time to choose, 
select, or examine, and no disposition. It was a dog- 
catcher's work ; and dog-catchers performed it. Streets 
were scoured at night of their human refuse ; the con- 
tents of hospitals, refuges, and reformatories were 
bought out wholesale, servant girls were waylaid, chil- 
dren were kidnapped. Michelet, in one of his matchless 
pages, writes : "A picture by Watteau, very pretty, 
very cruel, gives an idea of it. An officer of the gal- 
leys, with atrocious smirks and smiles, is standing 
before a young girl. She is not a public girl ; she is a 
child, or one of those frail creatures who, having suf- 
fered too much, will always remain in growth a child. 
She is perfectly incapable of standing the terrible voy- 
age ; one feels that she will die on it. She shrinks 
with fear, but without a cry, without a protest, says 
there is some mistake, begs. The soft look in her eyes 
pierces our hearts. Her mother, or pretended mother 
(for the poor little one must be an orphan), is behind 
her, weeping bitterly. Not without cause ; the mere 
transportation from Paris is so severe that it drove 
many to despair. A body of girls arose in revolt from 
ill treatment at La Rochelle. Armed only with their 
nails and teeth, they attacked their guards. They 
wanted to be killed. The barbarians fired on them, 
wounded a great many, and killed six." 



NEW ORLEANS. 39 

Another Watteau, with a different instrument, has 
given his reality of it in the tender perpetuity of 
romance. Do you remember the opening chapter in 
" Majion Lescaut " ? 



"I was surprised on entering this town [Passy] to find all the 
inhabitants in excitement. They were rushing out of their houses 
to run in crowds to the door of a mean hostelry, before which 
stood two covered carts. ... I stopped a moment to inquire the 
cause of the tumult, but I received little satisfaction from the 
inquisitive populace, who paid no attention to my questions. At 
last an archer, with bandolier and nuisket, coming to the door, I 
begged him to acquaint me with the cause of the commotion. 

'"It is nothing, Sir,' he said, 'only a dozen Jilles de j'oie, that I, 
with my companions, are conducting to Havre, where we will ship 
them to America. There are some pretty ones among them, and 
that is apparently what is exciting the curiosity of these good 
peasants.' I would have passed on after this exj)lanation, had I 
not been ai-rested by the exclamations of an old woman who was 
coming out of the tavern, with clasped hands, crying that ' it was 
a barbarous thing, a thing to strike one with horror and compas- 
sion.' ' What is the matter,' I asked. ' Ah, Sir,' said she, 
'enter and see if the spectacle is not enough to pierce one's heart.' 
Curiosity made me alight from my horse. ... I jjushed myself, 
with some trouble, through the crowd, and in truth what I saw 
was affecting enough. Ainong the dozen girls, who were fastened 
together in sixes, by chains around the middle of the body, there 
was one whose air and face were so little in conformity with her 
condition, that in any other circumstances I would have taken 
her for a person of the first rank. Her sadness, and the soiled 
state of her linen and clothing, disfigured her so little, that she 
inspired me with respect and pity. She tried, nevertheless, to turn 
herself around as nuich as her chains would permit, to hide her 
face from the eyes of the spectators. ... I asked, from the chief 
of the guards, some light on the fate of this beautiful girl. ' We 
took her out of the hospital,' he said to me, 'by order of the lieu- 
tenant general of the police. It is not likely that she was shut up 
there for her good actions. There is a young man who can instruct 



40 NEW ORLEANS. 

you better than I on the cause of her disgrace. He has followed her 
from Paris, almost without stojaping his tears a moment: he must 
be her brother or her lover.' I turned to the corner of the room 
where the young man was sitting. He seemed buried in a pro- 
found reverie. I have never seen a livelier image of grief . ... 'I 
trust that I do not disturb you,' I said, seating myself beside him. 
'Will you kindly satisfy the curiosity I have to know who is that 
beautiful person, who does not seem made for the sad condition in 
which I see her?' He replied politely, that he could not tell who 
she was, without making himself known, and he had strong 
reasons for wishing to remain unknown. ' I can tell you, however, 
what those miserable wretches do not ignore,' continued he, point- 
ing to the archers, 'that is, that I love her with so violent a passion 
that I am the unhappiest of men. I have employed every means 
at Paris to obtain her liberty. Solicitations, intrigues, force, all were 
in vain : I resolved to follow her, even should she go to the ends of 
the earth. I shall embark with her. I shall cross over to America. 
But, what is a piece of the last inhumanitjs these cowardly rascals,' 
added he, speaking of the archers, ' do not wish to permit me to 
approach her. My plan was to attack them openly several leagues 
outside of Paris. I joined to myself four men who promised me 
their help for a considerable pay. The traitors abandoned me, 
and departed with my money. The impossibility of succeeding 
by force made me lay down my arms. I proposed to the archers 
to permit me to follow them, offering to recompense them. The 
desire of gain made them consent. They wished to be paid every 
time they gave me the liberty to speak to my mistress. My purse 
became exhausted in a short while, and now that I am without a 
cent they have the barbarity to repulse me brutally every time I 
make a step towards her. Only an instant ago, having dared 
approach her despite their menaces, they had the insolence to 
raise their gun-stocks against me. To satisfy their avarice, and 
to be able to continue the journey on foot, I am obliged to sell 
here the wretched horse which has hitherto mounted me.' "... 



Poor Manon ! Poor Chevalier ! Poor playthings of 
Youth and Love ! Never has author Ijreathecl upon his 
creatures of romance the breath of such reality, if not 



NEW ORLEANS. 41 

of life. Nay, did they not incorporate, these frail 
children of Prevost's imagination, Manon and the 
Chevalier ! They left France phantasies of fiction, 
but they seem to have landed bodily in New Orleans, 
where, as the Chevalier tells Manon, "one must come 
to taste the true sweetness of love ; it is here that one 
loves without venality, without jealousy, without incon- 
stancy. Our compatriots come here to seek gold ; they 
would not imagine that we had found here far greater 
treasures." They seem, as has been said, to have 
landed in New Orleans in bodily form, for did not 
tradition long show, in the environs of the city, the 
grave of INlanon Lescaut? Are not relics of her still 
sold in the bric-a-brac shops here ? Is not the arrival 
in the colony of a Chevalier des Grieux registered in 
1711) ? Does not he live in history enrolled among 
the officers of the royal troops? And, alas ! does not 
his name head the record of a family tomb in one of 
the old cemeteries of a river parish? 

And so, out of the hell of lust, passion, and avarice 
that reigned in Paris during the last days of the System 
tliere, and out of the tempest of fury, ruin, and disgrace 
that followed tlie tiebdcle, ship after ship loaded and 
sailed for the New World and the new life ; and we 
can imagine the desperate hearts, looking from deck 
over the grey waste of the ocean, sending out new 
hopes like doves ahead, in quest of some green sign 
of the great regeneration. But of returning olive 
branches, the straining eyes were greeted but by few. 
On the contrary, dumped, like ballast, upon the arid, 
glittering sands of Dauphin Island or Biloxi, ill from 
the voyage, without shelter, without food, without em- 
ployment, blinded, tortured by the rays of a tropical sun, 



42 NEW ORLEANS. 

fevered and dying of the epidemic from the West Indian 
Islands ; with piles of brute African slaves rotting on 
the beach before them ; — the emigrants to this worse 
hell, must have sighed for the hell they had left. It 
is easy to believe the statement of the colonial records, 
that most of the unfortunates died in their misery. 

In the meantime, however, and through it all, we see 
Bienville busily preoccupied with his city, arguing 
with the directors of the Company of the West, at the 
Council Board, to convince them of the superior advan- 
tages of New Orleans over Biloxi, as capital of the 
colony; fighting the rival claims of Natchez to that 
position ; piloting a ship himself through the mouth 
of the river to prove its navigability ; and, in short, 
turning every circumstance, with deft agility, to the 
profit of his project. Taking with him the Sieur Pau- 
ger, assistant engineer, and a force of convicts and pi- 
queurs to the site occupied by the straggling cabins of 
his Canadian settlers, he had the land cleared and the 
streets aligned according to the plan of the engineer 
in chief to the colony, the Chevalier Le Blond de la 
Tour. 

One can, in a morning's walk, go over the square, the 
vieux carre, as it is called, laid out by Le Blond de la 
Tour. The streets, fifty French feet wide, divide the 
cleared space into the sixty squares now comprised 
between Esplanade and Canal, Old Levee and Rampart 
streets ; and their present names were given them, 
Cliartres (below the cathedral), Cond^, Royal Bour- 
bon, Dauphine, Burgundy, and crossing them Bienville, 
Conti, St. Louis, Toulouse, St. Peter, Orleans, St. 
Anne (the two saints at the sides of the Cathedral, 
Orleans at its back), Dumaine and St. Philippe. Ursu- 



NJiW ORLEANS. 43 

lines received its name later, from the convent. The 
barracks, or quarters of the soldiers, gave its name 
'' Quartier," to the last street below the Place. The 
central blocks, fronting the river, were reserved for 
the parish church of St. Louis, with the priest 
house on its left and guard house and prison on its 
right. In front, was the Place d' Amies. The govern- 
ment magazines were on both sides of Dumaine street, 
between Chartres and the river. The rest of that 
block opening on the Place d' Amies, was then, as now, 
used as a market-place. Facing tlie levee between 
St. Peter and Toulouse streets, was situated the 
" Intendance," intendant's house. The house of the 
Company of the West was on the block above, and on 
the block above that was the Hotel du Gouvernement, or 
governor's house. Bienville, however, built a private 
hotel on his square of ground, which included the site 
of the custom house of to-day. The j)owder magazine 
was placed on what would be now the neutral ground 
in front of the custom house. A view of the city, taken 
in 1718, about the time it was founded, for Le Page 
du Pratz, the historian, shows the levee shaded with 
trees, with buildings on both sides of the river, those 
opposite the city being on the plantation of the king, 
upon which Du Pratz afterwards served as ijhysician. 
He said that the quarters given to the '' bourgeois "(our 
first citizens) were overflowed three months of the year. 
He calls these blocks, therefore, '•'• Islands ; Isles," 
which is the origin of the Creolism " Islet " for street 
or square. 

A map of 1728 shows the buildings indicated on the 
margin of Pauger's plan, all put up, and the squares 
from "Bienville" street to the barracks, and out as 



44 :N^EW ORLEANS. 

far as Dauphine street, are pretty well filled with 
houses. 

The list of the settlers' names made by Pauger is 
still printed on the margin of his map. Their houses 
soon dotted the squares about the central parade and 
market-place and on the river front, and a thin line of 
them extended back to the high road, the old portage, 
and to the bayou that connected with lake Pontchar- 
train. This little bayou, Tchoupic (Muddy), was 
christened St. Jean in honour of Bienville's patron saint. 
Meandering into the city from the lake, with slow, 
somnolent current, it is still the favourite water-way 
for the leisurely traffic of sailing craft. In the time of 
the Company of the West, the whole stream of emigra- 
tion to the Mississippi lands flowed through it : the 
gaping eye of French peasant and Parisian cockney 
taking in, despite the lapse of a century and a half, the 
general features of the same panorama that to-day 
passes, with their dreams, before the half -closed eyelids 
of the Dago and Malay fishermen, reclining on the decks 
of their schooners; — low, rush-covered banks fringing 
into the water, moss-laden oaks, and the buttressed 
trunks of slimy cypresses. But the rush-covered banks 
of to-day extended then into vast swamp prairies, athrill 
with life, and scintillating with the light and colour of 
the low-lying heavens. The moss-covered oaks were 
forests, arching their shades into majestic mystery and 
solemnity; the buttressed trunk of that single cypress, 
and those straggling clumps of palmettoes, were then a 
tropical jungle, choking in the coils of its own inbred 
growth of vines. 

One single settlement of Indians, the Tchouchoumas, 
a vestige of tlie great river tribe, the Houmas, who had 



NEW ORLEANS. 45 

fled here from one of their internecine wars, dwelt then 
on the banks of the bayou. That genial first historian 
of Louisiana, Le Page du Pratz, who came to the colony 
in 1718, in the first excited rush after the Louisiana boom, 
selected his farm on the Bayou St. John, in the neigh- 
bourhood of these Indians. It was of them he bought 
that incomparable slave of an Indian girl, who, from the 
twilight moment when she rushed out with an axe to 
relieve the critical situation of her master, face to face 
with an intrusive alligator, awakes the interest of the 
reader, even as she did that of her master, and charms 
us into credulity, even as she did him through all the 
years of her services, with her marvellous explanations 
and stories. In truth, she might, with some appropri- 
ateness, be called the muse of Louisiana history. 

Despite the great mortality at Dauphin Island and 
Biloxi, the number of emigrants and slaves maintained 
a steady movement into the colony, and they were not 
all the nettings of Paris streets. For his concessions 
on the Arkansas, Law sent out a shipload of frugal, 
hardy, thrifty Germans ; incomparable colonial stock 
they proved. Entire plantations also were equipped 
from .the best peasant class of France. Concessions 
along the Gulf shore were filled in ; and plantations 
were cleared on the Mississippi above and below the 
city; and saw mills and brick kilns and other industries 
were established at points advantageous for work and 
transportation. As Bienville had designed, and as he 
laboured. New Orleans became the centre of all colonial 
activity, and Biloxi became more and more a mere offi- 
cial bureau. Finally, in 1722, Bienville's repeated argu- 
ments and representations to the Company of the West 
produced an effect, and orders were sent to transfer the 



46 NEW ORLEANS. 

seat of government to New Orleans. They were imme- 
diately carried into effect. In June, De la Tour and 
Pauger, led the way, by sailing a loaded vessel through 
the mouth of the river. As soon as word was brought 
to Biloxi that they had passed the bar, other vessels 
followed with building materials, ammunition, and 
provisions. 

Under De la Tour's supervision, the city took form 
and shape. The church and government houses were 
built, levees thrown up, ditches made, a great canal 
dug in the rear for drainage, a cemetery located, the 
old St. Louis of to-day, back of Rampart street, and 
a quay constructed, protected with palisades. Bien- 
ville arrived and took up his residence there in 
August. But, in the midst of the building and trans- 
portation, the September storm came on with a 
hitherto unexampled violence. For five days the 
hurricane raged furiously from East to West. The 
church and most of the new edifices were destroyed, 
and tliree ships were wrecked in the river. And then, 
as if to complete the disasters, a fever broke out which 
devastated the population as the storm had the 
buildings. The indomitable Bienville himself fell ill, 
and for a time his life was despaired of. But the 
momentum once acquired, the city advanced steadily, 
as over slight obstacles. The prostrate buildings were 
re-erected, and incoming population filled the vacancies 
caused by deaths. For still they continued to arrive, 
those ships loaded with all the human history of 
France of that day, adventure, tragedy, comedy, lettres 
de cachet, the Bastile, houses of correction, the prison, 
with an occasional special cargo of misfortune. Vol- 
taire relates that among the German emigrants sent 



NEW ORLEANS. 



47 



by Law to his concession on the Arkansas, there was a 
most beautiful woman, of whom the story ran, that 
she was the wife of the Czarowitz, Alexis Petrowitz. 
To escape from his brutal treatment, she fled from her 
palace and joined the colonists for Louisiana. Here 










she was seen and recognized by the Chevalier 
d'Aubant, who had known, and, it is said, loved her 
in St. Petersburg. She married him, and after a long 
residence in the colonies accompanied him to Paris 
and afterwards to the He de Bourbon. She returned, 



48 NEW ORLEANS. 

a widow, to Paris in 1754, and died there in great 
poverty. 

It was about this time, 1720, when the Com- 
pany of the West was still booming its scheme, that 
occurred the incident which has been so unaccount- 
ably neglected by the artists of the bouffe drama. 
The commander of the French fort in the Illinois 
country had the inspiring idea of impressing his 
Indian friends with a real sight of French power, and 
France by a sight of the Indian " au naturel." He 
therefore induced twelve warriors, and some women, 
to accompany him on a visit to their great father across 
the water. Among the women was the daughter 
of the chief of the Illinois, who was young, very 
beautiful, and in love with the French commander. 
A sergeant, Dubois, joined the party, and all arrived 
in New Orleans, where with a great flutter of excite- 
ment, talk, pow-wow, smoking, f eastings, joking, and 
laughing, and every manifestation of curiosity and fear, 
and every possible send-off and farewell, they took ship 
for France. Arrived, they were conducted to Ver- 
sailles, introduced at court and presented to the king 
with brilliant success. A deer hunt was gotten up 
for the warriors at the Bois de Boulogne, a kind of 
Wild- West show, that entertained the Court im- 
mensely. Upon the women, and particularly upon the 
daughter of the chief, Avere lavished the caresses of the 
high-born court dames, for whom they in return per- 
formed Indian dances upon the floor of the Italian 
opera. In a flash, the Indian belles became the sensa- 
tion of the day. The chiefs daughter, or Princess, as she 
was called, was converted to Christianity, and baptized 
with great pomp and ceremony at Notre-Dame ; and, 



NEW ORLEANS. 



49 



to perfect her patent as Christian and Parisian, she 
was forthwith married to Sergeant Dubois, who, to be 
made fit for so illustrious an alliance, was raised by 
the king to the rank of captain and commandant of 
the Illinois district. The bride received handsome 
presents from the ladies of the Court, and from the 
king himself ; and for the occasion the entire savage 
company was clothed in the gala costumes of the day, 
the squaws in fine petticoats and trains, the warriors 
in gold embroidered coats and cocked hats. Very much 
elated they were, the savage guests, when they re- 




embarked for home. They had another grand ovation 
in New Orleans, at the expense of the Company, and 
supplied with boats, rowers, and an escort of soldiers, 
they proceeded in state up the river. Dubois took 
possession of his new post and dignity, and it is said, 
for a brief season, enjoyed it. His wife, however, 
took to visiting her tribe more and more frequently. 
At last, one day, she helped her people surprise the 
fort. The Avhole garrison, including Dubois, was 
massacred. She, stripping herself of her fine but 
cumbersome French dress and religion, gaily returned 



50 NEW ORLEANS. 

to her savage life and companions — her civilization 
frolic over. 

Bienville was none too soon in the incorporation of 
his city. In 1724, the political cabal against him in 
the colony secured his recall. Confident in his record, 
upon arrival in France he answered the charges against 
him, with the memoir of the services that had filled his 
life, since the time when a mere stripling he had fol- 
lowed his brother Iberville in quest of the country, 
for the government of which he was now, a middle- 
aged man, called to account. He was nevertheless 
disgraced, deprived of his rank, and his property 
confiscated. 

Perier was appointed to succeed him. 







CHAPTER IV. 



THE UESULINE SISTEKS. 



TT^ROM the beginning, tlie Mobile days of the colony, 



JO 



the emigration of women being always meagre, 



there had been a constant appeal to the mother country 
for that requisite of colonial settlement, — wives. The 
Canadians of position, who were married, brought their 
wives with them to Louisiana, and many of them had 
grown daughters who naturall}^ became the wives of the 
young Canadians, also in good position. The French 
officers, younger sons of noble families, who could only 
marry their equals, led their life of bachelorhood in gay 
and frolicsome unconcern, the absence of wives being, 
it is feared, by them considered a dispensation rather 
than a deprivation. But for the rough, the crude human 
material of the colony, the hardy pioneers of the axe and 
the hatchet, tliere could be no possibility of domesticity 
in their log cabins, unless a paternal government came 
to their aid. "With wives," wrote Iberville, "I will 

51 



52 NEW OELEANS. 

anchor the roving coureurs de bois mto sturdy colo- 
nists." "Send me wives for my Canadians," wrote 
Bienville ; " they are running in the woods after Indian 
girls." "Let us sanction with religion marriage with 
Indian girls, " wrote the priests, " or send wives of 
their own kind to the young men." And from time to 
time tlie paternal government would respond, and ships 
would be freighted in France, and sail as in an allegory, 
to the port of Hymen. Of all the voyages across the 
ocean, in those days, none so stirs the imagination or 
the heart of the women to-day. And upon no colonial 
scene has the musing hour of women been so prolific of 
fancy as upon the arrival of a girl-freighted ship in the 
matrimonial haven. 

Dumont, who, like Du Pratz, threw his experiences 
in the colony into the form of a history, describes the 
arrival of such a vessel, but he looked at it with the 
eyes of the dashing young officer that he was, and not 
through the illusions that would have made it sensa- 
tional to a woman. What heart and brain shadowings 
must have appeared on the faces of these emigrants, in 
a double sense of the word ; thoughts and plans, fears 
and hopes, — above all, hopes, for the hopes predominate 
always over the fears of women sailing to the port of 
Hymen, — even of the most timid, the most ignorant, 
the most innocent women. And even, too, of the others 
who came, for tradition says and we know there was 
more than one Manon deported for the certain good 
of one country, and possible good of the other ; . . . . 
even these women, whatever sliame and disgrace they 
may have left behind, their hearts must still have hoped, 
aspired. Here was indeed a new world for them, a 
new life, a new future, a new chance for immortalitv. 



IfEW OllLEANS. 



53 



There would be no past here, that is, no tangible past, 
and so a forgettable past. "When they were landed," 
Dumont writes : " they were all lodged in the same 
house, with a sentinel at the door. They were per- 
mitted to be seen during the day in order that a 
choice might be made, but as soon as night fell, all 
access to them was guarded a toutes forces. It was 
not long before they were married and provided for. 











tr7-J- 



Indeed, their number never agreed with the number of 
aspirants that presented themselves. The last one left 
on this occasion became the subject of contest between 
two young bachelors who wanted to settle it by a fight, 
althougli the Hebe was anything but beautiful, looking 
much more like a guardsman than a girl. The affair 
coming to the ears of the commandant, he made the 
rivals draw lots for her. 



64 NEW ORLEANS. 

Once, one of the girls sent out refused to marry, al- 
though, as Bienville wrote, " many good partis liad been 
offered to her." And thus, also, this girl has been a 
fruitful theme for idle feminine musings breeding the 
still more idle longings to know more of her, her name, 
her reasons, her after life. And in this connection 
there comes also to the mind a quaint fragment in the 
voluminous complaints and accusations against Bien- 
ville, written by his enemies to the home government. 
It is a letter from the superior of the Grey Sisters, who 
had been sent out in charge of a cargo of girls ; and 
she says that the Sieur de Boisbriant, a kinsman of 
Bienville's, had had the intention of marrying her ; 
but that M. de Bienville and his brother had pre- 
vented him ; and she was sure M. de Bienville had not 
the qualities needful for a governor of Louisiana. 

In the course of twenty-five years these women 
created the need of other women. There were chil- 
dren in the colony now, and wives, home wives, or, as 
we might say, Creole Avives, to be educated for the 
Creole youths ; there were orphans to be reared, the 
old and infirm must be cared for; so again recourse 
was had to the mother country, and an appeal made for 
women, but not wives, — sisters. And the Company of 
the West, through the Jesuit father in New Orleans, 
M. Beaubois, contracted with the Ursulines of Rouen 
for the establishment of a convent of their order in 
New Orleans. 

It is with feelings of the tenderest veneration and 
pride that the Louisianians tell of the Ursuline sisters. 
They are the spiritual mothers of the real mothers of 
Louisiana. It is with intent that their advent in the 
colony has been chronicled this way, just after and in 



NUW ORLEANS. 55 

connection with those rude pioneer efforts to establish 
homes and domestic life in a new and still barbarous 
country ; it seems proper that the mission of nature 
should serve as introduction to the mission of grace. 
To say that the convent of our good Ursulines of New 
Orleans is the oldest establishment in the United States 
for the education of young ladies, that it made the 
first systematic attempt here to teach Indian and negro 
girls, that it was founded in 1727 under the auspices 
of Louis XV., and that the brevet from that monarch 
is still to be seen among the archives of the convent, — 
to say this seems to express so little ; it is only the 
necessary, that skeleton, a historical fact. It is not 
that way that one begins the story of the Ursulines in 
Louisiana ; one always begins with Madeleine Hachard. 
Madeleine Hachard was a young postulant in the 
Ursuline convent of Rouen, who obtained the consent 
of her father to accompany the mission to Louisiana. 
On account of her facility with her pen, and, we are 
quite snre of it, on account of her constant, hearty, and 
cheerful amiability, she was selected by the superior, 
Motlier Tranchepain, to act as her secretary and write 
the reports of the mission to the mother convent in 
France. But while Mother Superior Tranchepain 
dictated, her mind fixed on her convent and her mis- 
sion, the young sister Madeleine wrote, her thoughts 
fixed on her dear father and all her good sisters and 
l)rothers in Rouen ; and for every letter from the 
mother superior to her spiritual relations, we have one 
from Madeleine to her natural ones, — the same letters, 
with only the interpolations of endearments and care- 
less variations of a mind unconsciously copying. Her 
good parents in Rouen, pleased beyond measure with 



56 NE]V OELEANS. 

their daughter's epistohary talent, and proud of her 
wondrous experiences, had the letters published imme- 
diately, for the print bears the date of 1728. Mother 
Tranchepain's letters were published later, and thus 
Madeleine's innocent plagiarisms were brought to light. 
The reverend Mothers Tranchepain, Jude, and Bou- 
langer, chosen respectively for superior, assistant and 
depository, went to Paris in advance, to sign the con- 
tract with the gentlemen of the Company of the Indies. 
They were joined in Paris by INIadeleine Hachard, 
Madame St. Francois Xavier, of the Ursulines of 
Havre, and Madame Cavelier of Rouen, from the com- 
munity of Elboeuf. One cannot forbear the surmise 
that this latter belonged to the family of Robert 
Cavelier de la Salle, and joined the mission through 
hereditary affinity for Louisiana. It was on Thursday, 
the 24th of October, 1726, when Madeleine took the 
stage from Rouen, that her mission to Louisiana — 
that is, her wondrous adventures — began. Nothing 
but the fear of garrulity can excuse the churlishness of 
not giving her account of it, — how they arrived in 
Paris, at four o'clock of the afternoon, at the place 
where the stage stops, and found the portress of the 
Ursulines of St. Jacques waiting for them, and that 
she had been waiting for them ever since nine o'clock 
in the morning. And how, during their forced stay 
of a month in Paris, the comforts and interests of the 
convent life there tempted her almost to feel tempted 
to accept the invitation of the mother superior of St. 
Jacques, and give up the mission to Louisiana. But, 
on the 8th of December, at five o'clock in the morning, 
the coach for Brittany stopped at the convent door for 
them, and the sisters took their places in it for Lorient. 



NEW ORLEANS. 57 

The consciousness of the eventfuhiess of her journey 
thrills Madeleine through every moment of it, and (this 
was before her official duties had commenced) her only 
fear is that she will forget to tell her father some hap- 
pening of it. It should have been explained that the rev- 
erend Father Doutreleau and Brother Crucy, Jesuits, who 
were also going to Louisiana, accompanied the Ursulines. 
To commence with, they dined at Versailles and visited 
the magnificent palace of the King, and saw so much to 
glut their curiosity and wonder, that the young novice 
had a passing thought that she should shut her eyes to 
mortify the flesh. The next day's adventure was fur- 
nished by a good-looking cavalier, who, pursuing the same 
route as they, proposed to pay for and occupy the vacant 
seat in their vehicle, in order, as he said, to pass the time 
more agreeably in such pleasant company. His proposi- 
tion was not received with enthusiasm by the agreeable 
company, however, and Father Doutreleau gave him to 
understand that the ladies observed a three hours' 
silence every morning and evening. The cavalier 
replied that if the ladies did not wish to talk, he 
would entertain himself with Brother Crucy. But, 
when he made himself known as the president of 
Mayenne, where their boxes, valises, and packages 
were to be examined, they all clearly saw that they 
would have need of him, and not only no more demur 
was made to his joining the party, but they entertained 
him so well that, on their arrival at Mayenne, their 
luggage was put through the customs in a trice. We 
must not forget to say, — as Madeleine did until the end 
of her letter, — that the six hours of silence announced 
by the priest were not scrupulously observed during 
the episode, by the ladies. 



68 NEW OELEANS. 

They then passed that dangerous place where, eight 
days before, the stage from Caen to Paris had been 
robbed. And after tliat, the roads becoming more and 
more impassable, they had to start long before day 
and travel late into the night. Once, on the road, at 
tliree o'clock in the morning, their coach bogged, before 
tliey had gone two miles, and while it was being 
dragged out by a reinforcement to their twelve horses 
of twenty-one oxen, the party walked on. After three 







tv^ 



miles on foot, they found themselves very cold and tired, 
but not a house was to be seen to grant them warmth 
and rest; so they were obliged to sit on tlie ground, and 
Father Doutreleau, mounting a convenient elevation, 
began, like another St. John the Baptist, to preach to 
them, exhorting them to penitence; but, as Madeleine 
writes, what they needed was patience, not penitence. 
Resuming their march, they finally, to their great joy, 
discovered a little cottage in which there was only one 
poor old woman, in bed, and it was not without many 



NEW ORLEANS. 59 

prayers and promises that she allowed them to enter. 
She had neither wood nor candle, and the weary, frozen 
pilgrims were forced to content themselves with a fire 
of straw, by the light of which the reverend father read 
his breviary, while the rest waited for daylight. The 
stage did not come np with them until ten o'clock; and 
even then, most of that day's journey was performed on 
foot. But, in spite of their fatigue, Madeleine says 
they never left off laughing; amusing adventures con- 
stantly happening to them. They were mud up to their 
very ears ; and the funniest part of this was the veils of 
the two mothers, which were spotted all over by the 
whitish clay, giving the wearers a most comical appear- 
ance. And so on: every night a new town, a different 
tavern, or a different convent to stop in; every day a 
new page of adventures. During a visit to one of the 
convents. Father Doutreleau was taken by the superior 
for a priest of the Oratory, and, as no one corrected the 
mistake, there was much private merriment over it. 

Sister Madeleine here remembers that she has again 
forgotten to give her father an important detail, — that 
all the way from Paris, Brother Crucy and she have 
been at war. When they left Paris, his superior had 
charged her to be Brother Crucy's director, and the 
superior of the Ursulines at St. Jacques had charged 
Brother Crucy to be Madeleine's director, — and so they 
were equipped for many mischievous sallies at one 
another's expense, contributing not a little to the gen- 
eral gaiety and amusement. But, to quote Madeleine 
again, when one travels, one laughs at everything. 

They remained at the convent in Ilennebon until 
their vessel at Lorient was ready to sail, and here 
Madeleine took the veil, her novitiate being shortened 



60 NEW OELEANS. 

as a special favour. She signs herself henceforth, 
" Hachard de St. Stanislas." 

Three Ursulines joined the mission here, which raised 
its number to eight sisters, two postulants, and a ser- 
vant. The Jesuits were taking with them to Louisiana 
several mechanics ; " as for us, my dear father, do not 
be scandalized, it is the fashion of the country, we are 
taking a Moor to serve us, and we are also taking a very 
pretty little cat that wanted to join the community, sup- 
posing apparently, in Louisiana as in France, there are 
rats and mice. . . . Our reverend fathers do not wish 
us to say 'our,' as you know it is used in the convent, 
because they say the first thing we know we will hear 
the sailors making fun of us, with 'our soup,' 'our 
cup,' and so on. And, as it happens, ever since it has 
been forbidden us, I cannot prevent myself from using 
' our ' even to saying ' our nose.' Father Tartarin (one 
of the Jesuits bound for Louisiana) often says to me, 
' My sister, lift up our head.' " 

At last, "the day, the great day, the longed for day," 
arrived, when word was sent from Lorient that they 
must get ready to embark in an hour. The joy of all 
was inexpressible, but poor Madeleine's grief at leaving 
lier parents breaks out in a sob at the end of her letter. 
She assures them that the voice of God alone could 
have separated her from them, and begs them, " in mercy, 
not to forget their daughter." 

Her second letter was dated from New Orleans, and 
gives an account of the voyage across the ocean. Surely, 
sailors were never better justified in their superstition 
of the Jonah luck of priests, and it does seem that 
Jonah's eventual escape was no more miraculous than 
that of our band of missionaries. To begfin with the 



NEW ORLEANS. 61 

first alarm, the " Gironde " struck on the rocks just 
outside of Lorient, and almost went to pieces forthwith, 
in the estimation of the frightened passengers. The 
winds then commenced their malific contrariness, 
and beat directly against their route and kept the 
ship pitching so violently, that the sisters not only 
could not prevent their food from upsetting at table, 
but could not prevent themselves from being thrown 
one against the other. But neither this, nor their 
sea-sickness, nor their uncomfortable quarters (all 
six in a cabin, eighteen by six) could destroy their 
good humour nor arrest their laughter ; and in all 
the trying experiences, still to be endured, the mother 
superior never once lost her calmness and courage, 
nor for a moment regretted the holy mission she had 
undertaken. 

A terrible storm caused the death of most of the 
live stock, and the fare was reduced from the begin- 
ning to short rations of rice, beans cooked with suet, 
as they had no butter, salt meat, and pork so bad 
that they could not eat it ; and even this did not, in 
Madeleine's chronicle, depress their spirits » In fifteen 
days, they did not make the progress of three, so the 
water and bread had to be measured out to them. 
A short stop was made at Madeira, where the supplies 
were replenished. But, two days after leaving the 
island, while the wind beat again directly against them, 
a pirate was sighted ! Immediately preparations were 
made for a fight. Each man armed himself and took 
his position ; the cannon were loaded. It was decided 
that during the engagement the nuns should remain 
shut up below. The secular women, there were 
three of them aboard, dressed themselves in men's 



62 NEW OBLEANS. 

clothing and pluckily joined the combatants. Pere 
Tartarin stationed himself at the stern, Pere Doutreleau 
at the bow, Brother Crucy on tjie bridge to pay out 
ammunition to the men. " All these warriors, armed 
to the teeth, were admirable in their courage. . . . 
" As for us, our only arms were the chaplets in our 
hands. We were not cast down, thanks be to the 
Lord ! and not one of us showed any weakness. We 
were charmed to see the courage of our officers and 
passengers, who, it seemed to us, were going to crush 
the enemy at the first blow." . . . All the doughty 
preparations, fortunately, were useless, the suspicious 
vessel, after much circling and doubling, concluding 
to retire. . . . And they had a similar alarm after- 
wards. On Good Friday they crossed the tropic, 
and the usual burlesque ceremonies were deferred. 
Instead, there was a devout adoration of the cross, 
observed by the nuns, walking barefoot, the priests, 
ofificers, passengers, and crew. On the feast of the 
Holy Sacrament there was a pretty procession on 
deck. 

As if possessed by a mocking devil, the sea grew 
more and more violent and threatening, and the 
sisters had to tie themselves in bed to stay there, 
and their promised land seemed more inaccessible 
tlian ever. It is a surprise that the " Gironde " 
arrived even at St. Domingo. Here they laid in 
another supply of provisions, and loaded with a cargo 
of sugar, the nuns and priests each receiving a present 
of a barrel. The Gulf of Mexico had its pirates 
for them also, and to the contrary winds of the 
Atlantic it added its own contrary currents and 
deathly tropical calms. Borne out of their course 



NEW ORLEANS. 63 

they came in sight of an island wliicli was taken for 
Dauphin Ishmd ; close u})on the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi. The sisters were all on deck yielding without 
restraint to their feelings of joy, when all of a sudden 
the vessel grounded and with such a shock that "we 
took our rosaries and said our ' In manus ' believing 
that all was over and that our Ursuline establishment 
would be made then and there." In vain every ma- 
noeuvre was tried to move the ship ; she only settled 
deejier and deeper into the sand. The captain decided 
to lighten her. The cannon were thrown over, the bal- 
last ; the luggage w^as to go next ; the nun's resigning 
themselves heartily, " in order to endure the greater 
poverty" — but the sugar was selected as a sacrifice, 
and the whole cargo, even to the barrels given to 
the nuns and priests, went into the Gulf. Still, the 
vessel did not budge, and again the luggage was 
doomed, and again, with the permission of God and 
the protection of the Holy Virgin, the liquor belonging 
to the Company was substituted ; and a lot more of 
ballast found somewhere. 

Madeleine understood that they were not to go ashore 
in the island, except in case of dire necessity, because 
it was inhabited by cannibals, who would not only eat 
them, but put them through preliminary tortures. 
The " Gironde," by the help of the rising tide, was 
finally eased away ; and so proceeded hopefully to its 
next accident, on another sandbar, against which it beat 
and thrimped so fearfully that there could Ije absolutely 
no hope uoav except in the almightiness of God. Even 
the captain Avas astonished that the vessel could stand 
it, saying that nine ships out of ten would have gone to 
pieces ; that the " Gironde " must be made of iron. 



64 NEW ORLEANS. 

Every one fell to praying, no matter where, each one 
making vows to no matter whom, — " all being in such 
a state of confusion and alarm that we could not agree 
upon any particular saint to recommend ourselves to. 
. . . Most of us were at the feet of our amiable supe- 
rior, who represented to us that we ought to have less 
trouble than the others in suffering death, since before 
embarking we had made the j^erfect and entire sacrifice 
of our life to the Lord. ..." The vessel was again 
delivered from the jaws of destruction, but all these 
delays had exhausted the supply of water, which had 
to be measured out, a pint a day to each person. As 
the heat was intense, there was great suffering from 
thirst. 

Five months to a day after leaving France, the 
" Gironde " anchored in the harbour of the Belize. The 
nuns, with their luggage, in two barges, proceeded 
towards the establishment of the commandant, where 
they were to remain until boats could be procured from 
New Orleans for them. But their troubles pursued 
them still ; the sea was rough, the wind against them, 
the barges too heavily loaded, and the sailors drunk. 
The poor women were glad enough to be put ashore at 
a little half-acre of an island in the mouth of the river, 
where Madeleine records that in their lives they had 
never heard men curse so fluently as these sailors did. 
The commandant sent his own pirogue for them, and 
this time they reached their resting-place. 

After a week's waiting, boats arrived from New Or- 
leans for them, two pirogues and a barge. They were 
seven days on the river ; and even the intrepid Made- 
leine confesses that all the fatigues of the " Gironde " 
were nothing in comparison to those now experienced. 



NEW ORLEANS. 65 

Every day they stopped one hour liefore sunset, in order 
to get to bed before the mosquitoes — Messieurs les 
Maringouins — and the Frappe d'ahords commenced oper- 
ations. The oarsmen made their mosquito baires for 
them, by bending long canes, fixing the ends in the 
ground over their mattresses, and covering the frame 
with a linen which they securely tucked in all around. 
(^Baire is still the Creole, bar the American, name for a 
mosquito netting.) Twice the mattresses were laid in 
mud ; and once, a heavy storm breaking out in the 
night and pouring through their bars, Madeleine 
declares that they floated. During the day it was 
barely more comfortable. The pirogues were piled 
high with freight, upon the top of which the nuns 
perched in a cramped position, not daring to move for 
fear of ui^setting the boat and going to feed the fish. 
Their food was trappers' fare, biscuit and salt meat. 
Madeleine, writing after it was all over, gives the true 
traveller's sigh of satisfaction, however : "All these little 
troubles are trying at the time, but one is well recom- 
pensed for it in the end by the pleasure one takes in 
telling of them, each one recounting his own advent- 
ures. ..." 

The- whole colony was immeasurably surprised to 
hear of the safe arrival of the nuns, the " Gironde " 
being given up long ago for lost. As it was five 
o'clock in the morning when their boats touched the 
landing, few people were there to meet them. 

The convent that was being built by the Company 
was far from completion, so Bienville's hotel was 
rented for them. Madeleine describes it to her father : 
" The finest house in the town ; a two-story building 
with an attic, » . . with six doors in the first story. 



6Q 



NEW ORLEANS. 



In all the stories there are large windows, but with no 
glass ; the frames are closed with very thin linen, which 
admits as much light as glass. Our town,"" she con- 
tinues, " is very handsome, well constructed and regu- 
larly built, as much as I could judge on the day of our 
arrival ; for, ever since that day we have remained clois- 
tered in our dwelling. . . . The streets are large and 
straight ; . . . the houses well built, with upright joists, 
filled with mortar between the interstices, and the ex- 




|Ue(i[ roo^ house 



terior whitewashed with lime. In the interior they 
are wainscotted. . . . The colonists are very proud 
of their capital. Sulfice it to say that there is a song 
currently sung here, which emphatically declares that 
New Orleans is as beautiful as Paris. Beyond that it 
is impossible to go. . . . The women liere are ex- 
tremely ignorant as to the means of securing their 
salvation, but they are very expert in the art of dis- 
playing their beauty. There is so much luxury in this 
town that there is no distiiiction amonsf the classes so 



NEJV ORLEANS. 67 

far as dress goes. The magnificence of display is equal 
in all. Most of them reduce themselves and their 
family to the hard lot of living at home on nothing 
but sagamit}', and flaunt abroad in robes of velvet 
and damask, ornamented with the most costly ribbons. 
They paint and rouge to hide the ravages of time, 
and wear on their faces, as embellishment, small black 
patches." 

In another letter she finds it impossible to realize 
that she is in Louisiana, there being " as much magnifi- 
cence and politeness " tliere as in France, and gold and 
silver stuffs in common wear, although costing three 
times as much as in tlie mother country. As for food, 
she rattles off an astounding list for the good Kouen- 
nais ears : wild beef, venison, swans, geese, fowls, 
ducks, sarcelles, pheasants, partridges, cailles, and 
fish: cat ('an excellent fish'), carp, bass, salmon, be- 
sides infinite varieties not known in France. For vege- 
tables and fruits there were wild j)eas and beans, and 
rice ; pineapples, watermelons, potatoes, sabotins (a 
kind of egg-i^lant), figs, bananas, pecans, j)umpkins. 
. . . They drank chocolate and cafe au lait every day, 
and were accustoming themselves wonderfully well to 
the " native food of the country," bread made of rice 
or corn and mixed with flour, wild grapes, muscadines 
or socos, but principally riz au lait and sagamity ; hominy 
cooked with grease and pieces of meat or fish (the 
original of the Creole Jambalaya., in which rice has 
since been most toothsomely substituted for corn). 

Tradition asserts that the Ursulines did not long 
remain in Bienville's hotel, finding it too small. As 
soon as a sufiicient building could be hastily con- 
structed, they removed to the plantation given them, 



68 NEW ORLEANS. 

whose location is commemorated by those two quaint 
straggling thoroughfares in the lower part of the city, 
Nun and Religious streets. 

The colonists, delighted to be relieved of the expense 
of sending their daughters to France for an education, 
soon provided the Ursulines with all the scholars they 
could attend to. Seeing the young negro and Indian 
girls growing up in ignorance and idleness about them, 
the good sisters gathered them into the convent of 
afternoons, formed them into classes, and taught them 
their letters, catechism, and sewing. The orphanage 
was opened, and the care of the sick in the hospital 
immediately taken in hand. And the year following, 
the governor gave them charge of the last shipment of 
girls sent by the mother country. This was an inter- 
esting lot of sixty, who, intended as wives only for 
young men of established character and means, were 
of authenticated spotless reputation, having been care- 
fully selected from good families. They are known as 
"les lilies a la cassette," from the little trunk or cas- 
sette, containing a trousseau, given each one by the 
Company. They stayed in the convent while the young 
men of character and means availed themselves of the 
notable opportunity offered. Here and there in the 
state, tracing up some Creole family, one comes to 
a "fille a la cassette" ; and it is a tribute to the 
careful selection of the Company that she seems always 
found maintaining the recommendation of her good 
reputation and that of her family. Almost at the same 
time the Natchez massacre sent a boatload of orphans 
to the asylum. Indeed, as the items and records roll 
into the convent, and one looks back upon its manifold 
ministrations, and sees tlie nucleus of good that it was, 



NEW on LEANS. 69 

one must conclude that one might as well try to found 
a city without wives as without sisters. 

It took seven years for the company to finish the 
convent. In the meantime, the administrators of the 
Company of the West had surrendered the Louisiana 
Charter, and the colony had once more returned into 
the wardship of the royal government. Pontchartrain 
immediately reinstated Bienville in his old position of 
governor. It was he, therefore, who, in July, 1734, 
formally handed over the new convent to the Ursulines, 
and installed them therein. We see his fondness for 
ceremony and state in the account of it : At five 
o'clock in the afternoon the convent bells rang forth 
a merry peal. The colonial troops marched up and 
ranged themselves on each side of the gate, l^ienville, 
with the intendant and a suite of distinguished citizens, 
arrived to serve as escort. The chapel doors opened 
and the procession filed out. First came the citizens ; 
after them the children of the orphanage and day 
school, followed by forty ladies of the city, all holding 
lighted tapers and singing hymns. Then came twenty 
young girls dressed in white, preceding twelve others in 
snow white robes and veils, bearing palm branches, repre- 
senting St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, 
attended by little girls dressed as angels. The young 
lady who personated St. Ursula wore a costly robe 
and mantle, and a crown glittering with diamonds and 
pearls, from which hung a rich veil ; in her hand she 
carried a heart pierced with an arrow. Then came the 
nineteen Ursulines, in their choir mantles and veils, 
holding lighted candles ; after them the clergy bear- 
ing the sacrament under a rich canopy. Bienville, the 
intendant, and the military officers, all with lighted 



70 



NEW ORLEANS. 



candles, walked at the head of the royal troops, which 
closed the procession, their drums and trumpets blend- 
ing with the chanting of the nuns and priests ahead 
of them. As soon as they came in sight of the new 
building, its bells began a chime of welcome, join- 
ing in with the fifes, drums, trumpets, and singing. 
That new convent is the present Archbishopric, — the 
oldest building in the Mississippi Valley, the oldest 
conventual structure in the United States. As much 




Srttermt 

4ri|fb;&i)!it'&^».te. 



as a building can, it may be said to be indigenous to the 
soil. Its sturdy walls are of home-made brick, the 
beams and rafters are rough-hewn cypresses that grew, 
perhaps, on the very spot where now they support their 
ecclesiastical burden ; the bolts, bars, nails, hinges, and 
balustrades are of iron, handwrought in the government 
workshops by brute African slaves, as they were then 
designated. 

Here Madeleine Hachard lived until 1762, when she 



NEW ORLEANS. 71 

returned to France. For ninety years the gentle sis- 
ters here pursued their devotional works among the 
women of the colony, sowing the seeds of education 
and religion, until, generation after generation passing 
through their hands, — daughters, grand-daughters, 
great-grand-daughters, rich and poor, brides for govern- 
ors and officers, noble and base, bourgeoise and military, 
— they have become a hereditary force in the colony and 
state ; and in truth it is not exaggeration to say that 
there is no Louisiana woman living to-day Avho, directly 
or indirectly, is not beholden, for some virtue, charm, 
or accomplishment, to that devoted band who struggled 
across the ocean in the "Gironde." 

Panics of Indian massacres, and slave insurrections, 
wars, revolutions and epidemics, have beat about the 
old convent walls, without power to disturb the sacred 
vocation within. Through them the sisters heard the 
shouts of the frantic population huzzaing over their 
expulsion of hated Ulloa. From their windows they 
saw his ship pass down the river ; and from the same 
windows they watched O'Reilly's twenty sail pass up. 
They saw the banner of France descend from its staff 
in the Place d'Armes, and the gold and red of Spain 
unfold its domination to the breeze ; and it was in the 
sanctuary, behind these walls, that on their knees they 
heard the musket shots, in the barracks yard near by, 
that despatched the six patriots out of life. They saw 
the flag of Spain replaced by the Tricolor of the 
French Republic, and the Tricolor by the Stars and 
Stripes of the American Republic. It must have seemed 
to them — particularly to that one old sister who lived 
through it all, to shake hands with Jackson in 1815 — 
that no government in the community was steadfast 



72 NEW ORLEANS, 

except that of St. Ursula, notliing lasting in life save 
the mission of wives and sisters. 

H^re, during the never to be forgotten days of 
1814-15, they listened to the cannonading from the 
battlefields below, where a handful of Americans were 
standing up against the mighty men of valour of Great 
Britain, and when the day of Chalmette came, with 
anxious eyes they watched from their dormer windows 
and balconies the smoke rising from the battlefield, 
the rosary slipping through their fingers, their lips 
muttering vows, prayers, invocations. All night long 
they had knelt before their chapel altar, and they had 
brought and placed over the entrance of their convent 
their precious image of "Our Lady of Prompt Succour." 
Twice before she had miraculously rescued them, turn- 
ing back the flames of conflagration burning the vieux 
carrS bare. And again she heard them, and preserved 
their entrance inviolate, and saved the little city, so hard 
pressed by overwhelming numbers. And when Gen- 
eral Jackson left the Cathedral door after the solemn 
high mass and thanksgiving for his victory, he failed 
not to go to the convent, and pay his respects to the 
sisters, and thank them for their vows and prayers. 
They then had opened their doors wide and turned 
their schoolrooms into infirmaries for sick and wounded 
of both armies, upon whom they were lavishing every 
care. 

Every year since, on tlie 8th of January, high mass 
is celebrated and a Te Deum sung for the victory, with 
a special devotion to "Our Lady of Prompt Succour." 
This annual devotion, erected into a confraternity of 
Our Lady of Prompt Succour, has spread throughout 
the United States, and now, in this year of 1895, the 



NEW ORLEANS. 



73 



Sovereign Pontiff has conferred the privilege of solemn 
coronation upon the statue of the divine patroness of 
New Orleans, a privilege restricted to the most re- 
nowned sanctuaries alone of Christendom, and the first 
of the kind to take place in the United States. 

In 1824 the Ursulines removed to their present es- 
tablishment on the river bank, then three miles below, 
now well inside, the city limits. With its groves of 




rch 



l^noclKeT on 

— Q I ronepi'b L 



ocCoe 



IsViOBi />l.«c«. 



pecan trees, its avenues of oaks, its flowers and palms, 
its cloisters and terraces overlooking the river, its 
massive, quaint buildings filled with generous dormi- 
tories and halls, its batten doors opening on broad gal- 
leries ; its chapel and miraculous statue, its historic 
past and present activity, its cultivated, sweet-voiced 
sisters, the old Ursuline Convent, as it has come to be 
called, is still the preferred centre of feminine educa- 



74 NEW on LEANS. 

tion for Creoles, and a favourite one for all Roman 
Catholic Americans in tlie state. 

The young girls of 1895, in their convent costume, flit 
through corridor, gallery, cloister, to schoolroom and 
chapel, or pecan grove and terrace, continuing the 
stud}^ the prayer, the romps, the aspirations and fancies, 
of the young girls of 1727, watching with impatience 
the shadow that travels around the old dial, now as 
then, and as young girls will do forever — until it 
measures their meridian of womanhood and freedom, 
the prime meridian of all times and places, be it in 1727 
or 1895, in Ursuline convent or elsewhere for all young 
girls. 

In the Archbishopric, the Ursuline Convent has 
been respected. Nothing is changed in its aspect, 
interior or exterior, none but the necessary repairs 
commanded by time, permitted. In the convent chapel 
adjoining, behind the archbishop's chair, are enshrined 
the hearts of several bishops of New Orleans. 




W«IUv"13 



^Sket§» 



CHAPTER V. 



n^IIE revolt of the Natchez Indians against the 
-*- tyranny and oppression of the French officers, and 
their massacre of the garrison and settlement, threw 
the colony into the hitherto nnexperienced troubles of 
an Indian war. The Indians in the upper Mississippi 
country became openly hostile, those on tlie lower banks 
covertly so. Travel on the river changed, from its old 
time loitering picnic pleasure to a series of hairbreadth 
escapes from one ambush after another. Every white 
settlement in the colony trembled and shook with fear, 
and each plantation became the centre of secret panic, 
for, to the horrors of Indian attacks, were added the 
horror of an African rebellion, and the union of the 
two barbarous nations against the whites, incomparably 
their inferiors in number. Planters, with their fami- 
lies, abandoned their homes and rushed for protection 
to New Orleans, which itself lived in a continual state 
of alarm. One day a woman who had taken too much 
tafia came running in from the Bayou St. John, scream- 
ing that the Indians were raiding the Bayou, and had 
massacred all the settlers, men, women, and children, 
there, and were in full pursuit of her. Drums beat the 



76 NEW OE LEANS. 

general alarm, men flew to arms and gathered in tlie 
public square, where powder and balls were distributed 
to them. The women took refuge in the churches and 
in the vessels anchored in the river. All was wild fear 
for two hours, when the alarm was found to be ground- 
less. 

There seemed to be no alternative for French author- 
ity, but its assertion by a bloody supremacy. In such 
assertions the civilized races, inflamed by their fears, 
are no better than savage ones under the passion for 
vengeance. 

Perier had an easy opportunity at hand, and New 
Orleans received its first stigma of blood. Just above 
the city lived an insignificant group of Chouachas Indi- 
ans, who had endeared themselves to the citizens by 
their friendly offices of all kinds. Perier, a newcomer 
and a Frenchman, and in so far, it is hoped, an alien to the 
sentiments of tlie community, inaugurated his campaign 
against the Natchez by killing forever any possible hope 
the Indians might have had of a confederacy with the 
negroes. He armed the slaves of tlie neighbouring plan- 
tations, and, promising them tlie reward of freedom, he 
secured as barbarous an extermination of the unsuspect- 
ing red men as the latter could ever have inflicted 
upon their foes. And soon after, a war party having 
made a capture of four men and two women of the 
Natchez, Perier had them publicly burned on the levee 
in front of the city. Soldiers from all parts of the col- 
ony were summoned to the capital, and an army was 
sent against the Natchez. They, however, made their 
escape across the Mississippi, and put themselves out of 
reach of pursuit. 

When the reinforcements demanded from France 



NE]V ORLEANS. 77 

arrived, Perier, with another mustering of colonial 
troops, embarked them in barges and pirogues and led 
them up the Mississippi and through Red River, until 
he came to the country which held the Natchez strong- 
hold. But again the savages proved too wily for the 
white men, the bulk of them making their escape and 
seeking refuge with the powerful tribe of Chickasaws. 
Perier returned with but forty prisoners, whom he sold 
into slavery in St. Domingo. 

It was the depressing effect of these Indian troubles 
that had forced the Company of the West to remit its 
charter to the king ; and it was his old prestige in 
governing the Indians that gained Bienville his rein- 
statement as governor of Louisiana. The first efforts 
of his administration were therefore directed to punish- 
ing the Chickasaws for receiving the Natchez, and forc- 
ing them to give up the refugees. His warlike plans 
turned New Orleans into a camp for seven years. Del- 
egations of Indians, volunteers, Acadians, hunters from 
Missouri, coureurs de hois from all regions, and French 
soldiers, bombardiers, cannoneers, sappers, miners, such 
as had never been seen in the colony before — swarmed 
in the streets ; and Perier's embarkation was puny and 
trifling in comparison to the two expeditions which 
Bienville led away from the levee in front of the Place 
d' Amies. 

But the Canadian seemed to have lost his old cun- 
ning against the Indians, and he was no commander of 
French troops. His first expedition met v»'ith unmiti- 
gated disaster, the second with almost as mortifying 
a failure. He returned to the city with only a humili- 
ating treaty to show for all the brave preparations. 
Discouragement sapped from his heart all the old 



T8 



NEW ORLEANS. 



optimistic nerve that liad crstwliile vivified liis devo- 
tion to the colony — his colony, as he had some reason 
to consider it. Far from his maintaining as of yore his 
right and his sufficiency to the position of best man 
for it, in its misfortunes or in its prosperity, he now 
tendered to the government his resignation. It was 
accepted, and the Marquis de Vaudreuil was appointed 
in his place. 

One of the last acts of Bienville was to found a charity 




OUve (5u.s\rter5. • 



hospital, from a legacy left by a humble sailor in 1739 
for that purpose ; it was situated on Rampart street, 
between St. Louis and Toulouse streets. 

With Bienville's departure closed the childhood of 
the city. Tlie old glad pioneer days of the young 
Canadian government, with its boisterous, irrepressible 
officers, and their frolics and quips and cranks and 
larking adventures, and irreverent bouts with their 
spiritual directors, their processions, demonstrations 



NEW ORLEANS. 79 

and ceremonies — it all passed away like a hearty 
laugh. The Marquis de Vaudreuil brought with him 
the aristocratic exigencies of his title, the sedate state 
of the middle-aged, and the cultured polish of conti- 
nental etiquette. The new influx of French and Swiss 
officers, fresh from the centres of fashion and politeness, 
more than overmatched, in the estimation of the 
society of the capital at least, the virile virtues of the 
first settlers. '' Who says officer, says everything," 
was the growling comment of the old inhabitants. It 
is needless to say that the women of the city were the 
first and most enthusiastic converts to the higher stand- 
ard of the newer and more fascinating gay world ; and 
after a century of death, tradition through the old 
ladies of to-day still tells of the grandeur and elegance 
displayed by the Marquis, — his little Versailles of a hotel, 
his gracious presence, refined manners, polite speech, 
beautiful balls, with court dress de rigueur, dashing 
officers, well-uniformed soldiers. Even the old negresses 
— but they are always the rarest of connoisseurs about 
the standard of manners for white ladies and gentle- 
men — have trumpeted, from generation to generation, 
the Marquis de Vaudreuil as a model to be admired by 
all, and a test to be applied to individual social suspects. 
It was during this administration that occurred the 
episode that inspired Louisiana's first dramatic effort: 
" The Indian Father," acted in the governor's mansion 
in 1753. Afterwards it was put into verse by a French 
olficer, Le Blanc de Villeneuve, and was performed at 
the Orleans theatre. A Colapissa Indian killed a Choc- 
taw, and fled to New Orleans. The relatives of the 
Choctaw came to the city and demanded the murderer. 
The Marquis de Vaudreuil, after trying in vain to pacify 



80 J^EW OliLEANS. 

the Choctaws, ordered the arrest of tlie Cohipissa, but 
he made his escape. The father of the Colapissa then 
came to the Choctaws and offered his life in atonement 
for the crime of his son ; it was accepted. The old 
man stretched himself instantly on the trunk of a fallen 
tree, and a Choctaw chief at one stroke cut his head 
from his body. 

Dumont relates another incident of the period, which 
also, it would seem, might find fitting commemoration 
in verse. The colony was without an executioner, and 
no white man could be found who was willing to accept 
the ofiice. As every well-regulated government must 
have an official executioner, it was decided finally by 
the council to force it upon a negro blacksmith re- 
nowned for his nerve and strength, named Jeannot, 
belonging to the Company of the Indies. He was 
summoned and told that he was to be appointed execu- 
tioner and made a free man at the same time. The 
stalwart black giant started back in anguish and horror. 
" What I cut off the heads of people who have never 
done me any harm?" He prayed, he wept; but saw 
at last that there was no escape for him, that his 
masters were inflexible. " Very well," he said, rising 
from his knees, ''only wait a moment." He ran to his 
cabin, seized a hatchet witli his left hand, laid his right 
on a block of wood and cut it off. Returning, without 
a word he exhibited his bloody stump to the gentlemen 
of the council. With one cry, it is said, they sprang 
to his relief, and his freedom was given him. 

De Vaudreuil being promoted to the governorsliip 
of Canada, M. De Kerlerec was appointed to succeed 
him in Louisiana. 

De Kerlerec was an officer of the Marine, a gruff, 



NEW ORLEANS. 81 

bluff old salt, who, carrying on an unceasing war with 
his subordinates, organized their enmity against him- 
self so well that after ten years they succeeded in hav- 
ing him recalled to France, and promptly lodged in the 
Bastile on his arrival in Paris. 

His administration covered the period of the Seven 
Years' War, when P'rench and English fought hand to 
hand for the possession of Canada. Although far 
removed from the seat of hostilities. New Orleans, as 
a French possession, suffered her share of incidental 
damages. The English fleet patrolled the Atlantic and 
the Gulf of Mexico, over which English privateers 
swarmed, intercef)ting and capturing the convoys of 
supplies from France, and completely destroying her 
commerce ; and France could neither renew the sup- 
plies nor protect her commerce. 

Curtailed in means, Kerlerec was forced to suspend 
his yearly tribute of presents to the various important 
Indian tribes between him and the British possessions. 
The venal, discontented savages immediately abandoned 
him and turned to trading and treating with the Eng- 
lish. Means failed, also, to pay the royal troops ; and 
the soldiers, disgusted with a service in which there 
was no money, no food, and no clothing, began also to 
desert in large numbers to the English. 

Kerlerec stoutly did what he could to put the colony 
in the best state of defence possible with his inadequate 
resources. A ditch was dug and a palisaded embank- 
ment erected all around the city, the batteries at English 
Turn were repaired. The main reliance, however, in 
case of fighting, was not upon the French troo2:)s, but 
upon the Swiss mercenaries, who were stationed in all 
the important posts. These were held firm amid the 



82 NEW ORLEANS. 

general demoralization and defection of the French 
soldiery, by a pitiless application of military discipline ; 
one of the judicial tragedies of the city. 

A detachment of Swiss was qnartered at Ship Island, 
which was under the command of a Frenchman, 
Duroux. The island is a mere dot of white sand in the 
Gulf, a veritable pearl, which at a distance dances and 
plays in the gay blue water. It seems totally inade- 
quate to the amount of human suffering which has been 
experienced upon it, in later times as a military prison 
of most cruel hardships, and then as the scene and 
opportunity for the brutality of Duroux. The isolated 
spot was his kingdom, and he used his soldiers as if no 
one before him had fittingly illustrated the meaning of 
" tyrant." He sold their rations and gave them for food 
only what they could gather from the wreckage of the 
Gulf. Instead of performing their military duties, they 
were forced to till his garden, cut timber for him, and 
burn tlie charcoal and lime out of which he drove a profit- 
able private trade. His exactions of work would have 
been considered beyond human endurance, had he not hit 
upon a form of punishment which experience proved to 
be clearly so. He simply stripped his criminals naked, 
and tied them to trees ; and the mosquitoes, those 
voracious mosquitoes of the Gulf, accomplished the 
rest. In desperation, some of the soldiers ran away to 
the capital, carrying their complaints to the governor, 
and a piece of the bread they were given to eat. Ker- 
lerec, a naval martinet, sent them immediately back to 
Ship Island. Then the Swiss took the case in tlieir 
own hands, and had recourse to the time and world- 
renowned measures of the over-burdened. 

One day, as Duroux's boat neared the strand, after a 



NEW on LEANS. 83 

hunting expedition, tlie drums beat the salute, the banner 
of France was raised, and the guard filed out in arms. 
But, as the hated commandant put his foot on land, the 
corporal gave command, and the tyrant fell, pierced, it 
is safe to say, with a bullet from each musket. His 
body was thrown into the Gulf. The prisoners, of 
whom Duroux kept a constant supply in irons, were 
released ; and one of them, a sea captain, was forced to 
pilot the rel^els to the English possessions. Arrived at 
a safe distance, they sent him back with a certificate 
that he had aided them only under compulsion. The 
party separated ; one band reached the English in 
safety ; the other was captured, one man stabbing him- 
self to the heart to avoid arrest. They were sent to 
New Orleans. A court-martial was held by the officers 
of the Swiss regiment ; the men were condemned, and, 
according to their regulations, were nailed alive in their 
coffins, and sawed in two. The ghastly execution of 
the order took place in the barracks yard. The man 
who had served as guide was broken on the wheel at 
the same time and in the same place. 

An interesting event connects the first clashing of 
arms in the valley of the Ohio with New Orleans. 
This was when George Washington, a colonel in the 
British army, was sent by the governor of Virginia 
against Fort Duquesne. On the march he heard of a 
French detachment coming to surprise him. He sur- 
prised it, and in the engagement, Jumonville, the ensign 
in command, was killed. Jumonville de Villiers, his 
brother (ancestor of the New Orleans family) obtained 
from Kerlerec the permission to go and avenge the 
death. With a band of soldiers and Indians he hast- 
ened to the scene of the engagement, and found Wash- 



84 



NE]V ORLEANS. 



ington entrenched in Fort Necessity. He attacked 
him, and forced the future Father of his Country to 
surrender to him. Later, there came down the river 
the boats bearing the garrison and officers of Fort 
Duquesne, who, after a gallant resistance, were forced 
to abandon their post. And later, down the great 
artery of the continent, came from time to time other 




" Tignoii Creole 



driftings of the French wreckage going on in the North, 
— weary, heart-broken bands of Acadian pilgrims. 

Finally, in 1763, France was forced to sign the 
Treaty of Paris, which left in England's grasp all of 
her possessions east of the Mississippi, with the ex- 
ception of the Island of Orleans, as it was called, that 
irregular fragment of land lying between Manchac or 
Bayou Iberville and the lakes, which belongs, as natu- 
ral appanage, to the city of New Orleans. This same 
year Kerlerec was recalled to France, and M. d'Abadie 



NEW ORLEANS. 85 

arrived with the diminished title of director-general, 
to suit the diminished area of his government. The 
military force, reduced to three hundred men, was put 
under command of Aubry, senior ranking captain. 

English vessels were soon a familiar sight sailing up 
and down the river, to and from their new possessions, 
above Manchac, from which the French inhabitants 
moved with their slaves, inside the French lines, many 
of them to the capital. The Indians loyal to France 
followed them, occupying lands assigned to them by the 
government about the city and on the lakes. 

The increase of wealth and population, and concen- 
tration of vitality in the city, produced there a sudden 
revival of activity of all kinds. New houses sprang up 
to answer the increased demand, new shops and maga- 
zines were opened along the levee, and coffee houses 
blossomed out from street corners. Deprived for so 
long a time of so many of the necessaries of life, the 
colonists, when occasion at last gratified them, could 
not content themselves with anything less than the 
luxuries of it. The English shrewdly profited by this 
epidemic of extravagance, and took advantage of the 
crippled condition to which they had reduced French 
commerce. Many of the vessels going up the river, 
ostensibly to carry supplies to the English possessions, 
were in reality floating shops, well supplied with goods 
of all kinds, and furnished inside with the regulation 
counters, shelves, and clerks. They stopped at a hail, 
and soon acquired the trade of the entire French coast, 
a trade which was all the more thriving as it was illicit. 
For the convenience of New Orleans customers, these 
contraband boats used to tie up at a tree on the river 
bank a short distance above the city. As Manchac was 



86 NEW ORLEANS. 

their first lawful landing-place, this place was wittily 
dubbed "little Manchac," and "going to little Man- 
chac " was long the current expression in the city for 
shopping excursions to contraband centres. 

Now must be told that religious scandal of the time, 
the war between the Jesuits and Capuchins. For the 
elements of this famous feud one must go back, if not 
to the beginning of human nature, at least to the period 
when the bishop of Quebec, the spiritual head of Loui- 
siana, appointed a Jesuit as his vicar-general. 

The Capuchins claimed the territory by right of a 
contract with the India Company, and therefore opposed 
the exercise of any spiritual functions by tlieir rivals. 
In every bout with their burly, physically su})erior, 
antagonists, the Jesuits came off victorious. During 
Kerlerec's administration the campaign had been 
unusually sharp and brilliant. A new instrument of 
warfare — an instrument of polite warfare — had been 
imported, the manipulation of which became a furore 
with the partisan citizens. Epigrams, pasquinades, 
squibs, lampoons, burlesques, satirical songs, were 
posted on the corners of every thoroughfare, and the 
latter were sung in the coffee-houses. There seemed 
to be no end to the pleasing variety and abundance of 
the wit displayed by the citizens, who must have 
enjoyed the occasion as one of real literary culture ; 
and it may be here mentioned that they became in 
course of time so addicted to this mode of expressing 
not only religious, but political and even personal ani- 
mosities, and became such biting adepts at it, provok- 
ing such postscripta of duels, that in the end it was 
forbidden l)y law. 

The superior council, although invoked by both 



NEW OBLEANS. 87 

parties, wisely forbore deciding in favour of either, 
as much in fear of tlie arrogance of the victorious, as 
of the hostility of the defeated side ; but they patched 
up a truce, only a seeming, and, as it turned out, an in- 
sidious one. Father Hilaire de Genovaux, the superior 
of the Capuchins, although a priest, was by nature a 
warrior, to whom defea^t meant anything but a discipline 
for the promotion of patience and resignation. He, one 
day, left his convent and the city and departed for 
Europe, saying nauglit to any one of his intentions or 
purposes. He returned in the same effective manner, 
but bearing tlie high-sounding title and office of apos- 
tolic protonotary, which completely outranked the 
vicar-general of the bishop of Quebec. The surprise 
of the Jesuits was complete ; so was their wrath, and 
the quarrel flamed on with more brilliancy than ever. 

But neither the wit of the partisans of the Jesuits, 
nor the sharpness of the superior of the Capuchins, 
brought this memorable campaign to a close. Louisi- 
ana had to swing with the great pendulum of the mother 
country. The Jesuits were expelled from Bourbon 
Europe, they must be expelled from Bourbon America. 
A decree to that effect was sent to New Orleans. It 
is true that Louisiana owed to the Jesuit fathers an 
irredeemable debt of gratitude. They had been the 
first missionaries in the colony, and her constant friends 
at court and in high places. It was they who had ob- 
tained the establishment of the Ursulines, and it was 
they who made the first agricultural experiments ; do- 
mesticating fruits, vegetables, indigo, and sugar cane 
in the soil. Nevertheless the decree to expel them was 
final, and it was enforced. All their property, includ- 
ing their fine plantation, was sold at auction, and they 



88 NEW ORLEANS. 

were made to leave. The Ursuline sisters Avere broken 
hearted at the loss of their friends and directors, and 
the ladies of the city would not so much as tolerate the 
idea of a Capuchin confessor, and the exaltation of 
female martyrdom was in the air. Although, in a way, 
the difficulty had been solved, its settlement seemed 
further away than ever. 




fttneeTQ4VM»s. 




<Sloam«,>) V,o 



-■T^ ^-P 



CHAPTER VI. 



^ I ^HE deus ex machina of Louisiana had always been 
-^ the prime minister of France. The Due de Choi- 
seul now filled that office. 

Louis XV. neither reigned nor governed ; it was La 
Pompadour who reigned and governed for him. We 
read of the monarch, sitting like some Dantesque hero 
of the Inferno, in the secret regions of his gorgeous 
palaces, with the never-ceasing curse upon him of en- 
deavouring to satisfy the appetite of the monster of his 
own desires. Not Hogarth himself has better traced 
for us the road to ruin, the royal road to ruin, than Louis 
le bien aime. And working thus unceasingly to de- 
liumanize himself, he attracted around him as coun- 
sellors, servitors, friends, and companions, only those 
who made the process smooth and easy for him. 

It was not as in the easy-going time of the witty, 
clever, amiable, dissipated Regent, when pleasure and 
business, scandal and politics, hustled one another in 
broad daylight, in the talking, laughing, streets of Paris. 
With Louis XV. it was all dark, mysterious, under- 
ground ; one fears to advance a finger in any direc- 



90 NEW ORLEANS. 

tion, for fear of touching the foul. When an intrepid 
volunteer, like Michelet, venturing into the secret 
sewers of court records, returns to tell of it, we shrink 
from him — he bears evidence of putrid exhumations, 
and we are nauseated. 

The prime minister was not so much the Due de 
Choiseul, as his sister, Madame de Grammont, the man 
of business, as she was called, of La Pompadour. She 
was also called " la doublure," the lining of her brother. 
Her amljition, it seems, was that ^^urely feminine one, 
of repairing the impoverished fortunes of her family, 
and in this ambition women can be inflexible, inexor- 
able, and unscrupulous. The best of the patrimony of 
the De Choiseuls, was, it is said, their caj^acity for 
treason, and of the due Michelet writes : ' ' He did not 
go to war, il Jit la chasse aux fenmies.'^ The same 
authority, from the intimacy of his knowledge of this 
period, describes the De Choiseul he knew : " A little 
bull-dog face he had, ugly, audacious, impertinent, with 
a mocking tongue, a deadly weapon feared by the brav- 
est . . . vivacious, brilliant, keen, penetrating, believing 
nothing, fearing nothing, an easy moralist, an uncer- 
tain ally, a hater of priests, light nunded, inconstant. 
First, he worried La Pompadour, then he charmed her, 
then gave himself to her." " You will be damned, 
Choiseul," once said the king to him with a smile. 
"And you, sire?" "I, oh, I am different; I am the 
anointed of God." 

It was a ghastly prologue to our own little Louisiana 
tragedy as we read it now, that played by the king, the 
favourite, and the prime minister, with his shadowy 
controller-general Silliouette. Morally, for France 
there was but one proportionate drama to follow, the 



NEW on LEANS. 91 

Revolution. Politically, there was but one tiling for 
France to lose, " simply the world," as Michelet says. 
From truckling to Austria, Choiseul turned to truck- 
ling to Spain, and he created and put into shape his 
famous Facte de Famille in 1761, which federated the 
blood of the Bourbon, and united into a combined trust 
the thrones of France, Spain, Turin, Naples, and Sicily. 
Thence the international war upon the Jesuits, and 
thence the transfer of Louisiana to Spain l)y a secret 
clause in the Treaty of Paris. The clause remained a 
secret until October, 1764, when M. d'Abadie received 
official notice of it, with the copies of the acts of dona- 
tion and acceptance, and instructions to hand the col- 
ony over to the envoy of the king of Spain, who was 
to arrive. 

Upon publication of the fact in the city, the 
inhabitants were transfixed with consternation. This 
was an old world and a middle-age eventuality, the 
giving away of a country, with its people, to a for- 
eign master, as a planter might hand over his land and 
slaves to a purchaser — that had never occurred to the 
Louisianians. They had no need of recourse to tradi- 
tion to animate their feelings. Men Avere still alive 
among them who had taken possession of the country 
in its wild state of nature, who had founded it, estab- 
lished it, and held it firm to France, with but little help 
or encouragement, too, from the mother country, 
against both Englishman and Spaniard. Nay more, 
they had dominated the Gulf of Mexico itself, and had 
France but held out a finger to them, even surrepti- 
tiously, they were prepared to prove at any dinner-table 
or coffee-house in the city, that Iberville and Bienville, 
Chateauguay, De Serigny, and themselves, could have 



Q2 NEW 0BLEAN8. 

solidified Central America, and the islands of the Carib- 
bean Sea, into an indestructible French power. Rude 
fighters themselves, and accustomed to rude stakes, 
they could have understood the cession to England — 
that would have been according to the fortunes of war. 
England had whipped in the contest for supremacy, 








and Frenclimen of Louisiana, as well as Frenchmen of 
Canada, must stand to the terms of defeat. But to be 
tossed without the asking, from Louis XV. to Carlos 
III., to be made over, in secret bargain, to the Span- 
iards, — to the not so much hated as despised Spaniard, 
who had never ventured a blow or fired a shot for them, 



NEW ORLEANS. 9t 

whom they had overmatched with half their wits and half 
their strength, in every contest ! That was a fate that 
no Louisianian was craven enough to be resigned to ! 

Cities act like individuals in a crisis. Stupor fol- 
lowed the shock in New Orleans, and excitement 
followed the stupor, mounting quickly into temper, 
fury. The streets hummed and throbbed with it. 
The cabarets exploded with indignant denunciatory 
eloquence. The king could not mean it ! The king 
did not know what he was doing ! He was ignorant of 
the true facts of the case ! He had no idea of Louisi- 
ana or the Louisianians ! He must be informed, expos- 
tulated with, petitioned. The citizens, the colonists, 
must speak ; they must express their sentiments, the 
will of the people must be evoked ! The will of the 
people ! The word was out, and the idea ! The word 
and the idea that were to be made flesh a decade hence 
in the revolted American colonies. 

A convention was called to meet in New Orleans, and 
each parish in the state was requested to send delegates. 
Every parish responded with its best and most notable; 
the city did likewise. A large and impressive assembly 
met. It was opened by Lafr^niere, the attorney-gen- 
eral, than whom no man could with better credentials 
represent the colony in spirit and in letter. His father 
was one of four Canadian brothers, pioneers under 
Iberville and Bienville, who had distinguished them- 
selves in every field of danger and enterprise offered by 
the rough times and rough country. Crumbling parch- 
ments of marriage contracts and land sales show them 
to have acquired wealth and honours and to have 
formed alliances with the families of what, in feudal 
times, would have been called Louisiana's nobility. The 



94 JSfEW ORLEANS. 

attorney-general was a man of winning address and 
fiery eloquence, in character and acquirements one of 
the best growths of Louisiana from Canadian seed. 
He opened the convention with a strong, stirring speech, 
proposing the resolution that the colonists, en masse, 
supplicate the king of France not to sever them from 
their country. It passed unanimously. A delegation 
of three citizens, Jean Milhet at the head, was appointed 
to carry it to France and lay it at the foot of the throne. 
They left by the first vessel. 

Arrived in Paris, the delegation sought out Bien- 
ville, the old father Bienville, for he was still living in 
Paris, an octogenarian now, with long white hair. One 
has only imagination to supply the details of the inter- 
view, the questions, explanations, reading of the petition, 
names ; what the Louisianians had to say of Louisiana, 
Bienville of France, Paris. Louisiana was so much 
more the country of the white-haired patriarch, than of 
the king or the duke, or of any man or woman in 
France. Surely he would be received, listened to. 
He consented to accompany Milhet to the Due de 
Choiseul. Their primitive idea was to throw them- 
selves on their knees before the king and present the 
petition, which reads to-day more like the passionate 
appeal of a lover to his mistress. And they would add 
their voices in supplication not to be cast off ; they them- 
selves would implore from their sovereign the proud 
satisfaction for the Louisianians, of being able to die 
as they had lived. Frenchmen, not Spaniards. It would 
indeed have been a scene and an interview worth record- 
ing. For the picturesqueness of history it is a pity 
that it did not take place. De Clioiseul listened with 
perfect politeness, promised the interview with the 



NEW ORLEANS. 95 

king, promised his influence ; promised everything, 
like a modern politician, and — never kept his word. 
It was not that he paid his royal master the compliment 
of supposing that this white-haired pioneer, the son and 
brother of the best pioneers France could make out of 
her flesh and blood — that these new specimens, these 
Frenchmen from the new world, could stir a memory of 
Louisiana, or arouse a patriotic thrill in that enfeebled, 
exhausted, diseased heart. But the Facte de Famille 
was De Choiseul's own master-stroke of policy, the 
cession of Louisiana his own paraph on the margin of 
it. The delegation came again and again, always meet- 
ing politeness and promises. The others returned to 
the colony, leaving Milhet in Paris. He, after a year 
of effort, deceived, thwarted, betrayed in every verbal 
way by tlie brilliant ])rime minister — lie also returned 
home with the incredible report that he had not been 
able to see the king, had not presented the petition. 

In the meantime, in New Orleans, d'Abadie had died 
and Aubry was put in command for the short interval 
before cession to Spain. But no Spanish envoy pre- 
sented himself. With their delegation and petition at 
work at court, the optimistic citizens reacted from the 
excitement of dejection and despair, to buoyancy of 
spirits. When, at the landing-place in front of the 
Place d' Amies, a boat load of gaunt, haggard Acadians 
arrived, and told their story, how their country had 
been ceded away, their churches, their allegiance, how 
they had tried to live under foreign masters, but at 
last, under exactions and suspicions, and despair of all 
kinds, they had been forcil)ly ejected from their fields 
and homes, the citizens, overflowing with hospitality, 
generosity, and sympathy, drew no warning from it, 



96 



NEW ORLEANS. 



Imt rather encouragement of their own sense of secur- 
ity and self-sufficiency. So ill-prepared were they, that 
like a thunder clap in a cloudless heaven, came an 
official letter in July, 1766, announcing that the Span- 
ish envoy, Don Antonio de Ulloa, was on his way to 
take possession of the colony. There Avas another cata- 
clysm of excitement ; but as the envoy did not make his 




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, ji ,. ^ r^.^Ti 'f*# '^ ."^' *\^ ^^^^^ ^^ 



P-..TJ7. 



S^tl^e^arvcVp (9u».rtep. 



appearance, and Milhet did not return, the minds and 
hearts of all again rebounded to hope and courage. 

In February Ulloa arrived at the Balise in a frigate 
of twenty cannon, with two companies of Sj)anish 
infantry, three Spanish Capuchins, and the personnel 
of his administration, a commissary of war, Loyola ; 
an intendant, Navarro ; and a comptroller, Gayarri?. 
He reached the city in March. An ominous storm 



NEW OBLEANS. 97 

of wind and rain was raging. Aubry did what he 
could in the way of a reception. The militia and 
regular troops were drawn up on the levee, the cannon 
fired a salute, and there Avas, stimulated by Aubry, a 
faint attempt at acclamation. But the citizens stood 
in groups to one side, silent, sullen, and cold as the rain 
pouring over them. 

In appearance the Spanish envoy was middle-aged, 
grave, haughty, severe, and petrified in Spanish eti- 
quette and ceremony. He was no inconsiderable per- 
sonage, but a man of repute, both in the military and 
scientific worlds, and was just then returned from an 
exj^edition in which he had formed one of a commission 
to determine the configuration of the earth at tlie equa- 
tor. He seems to have approached Louisiana in the 
same cool, calm, critical spirit of scientific investigation, 
and he was about as much prepared to hear that the 
equator had risen up and protested against the results 
of his commission, as to find that other purely theo- 
retical factor, the will of the people of Louisiana, in 
opposition to his presence and functions. He expected 
the country to change its flag and allegiance, the sol- 
diers their service, the ]3eople their nationality, as 
a thing of the most commonplace of course. The 
superior council of the colony requested him to show 
his powers and authorities. He refused curtl}^ and 
sent for Aubry to confer with him. When he learned 
that the French soldiers refused to enter the Spanish 
service, he agreed that the formality of taking posses- 
sion should be deferred until more Spanish troops 
were sent to him, quartering his own force in separate 
barracks, apart and distinct from Aubry's. But, as 
if that formality had been duly and legally observed, 



98 NEW ORLEANS. 

he proceeded to the clerical work of his office, taking 
the census, issuing new rules and regulations, and 
rendering decrees of trade and commerce. The exist- 
ence of the civil authorities was ignored, and Aubry was 
made the official mouthpiece of the envoy and organ 
of communication with the people. The various mili- 
tary posts were visited, new ones established, the French 
flag being informally replaced by the Spanish. In 
New Orleans, however, the French colours floated as 
ever, and the externals, at least, of French domination 
were not infringed. 

The inhabitants of the country parishes chafed and 
fumed. The citizens of New Orleans seethed and 
boiled. If no opportunity offered, they must inevita- 
bly have created one, for the expression of their feel- 
ings. But tlie opportunity was offered by UUoa. 
Apart from patriotic sentiments, what the people of 
Louisiana most feared from Spain, was the imposition 
of those narrow-minded trade regulations, framed for 
the Spanish colonies, Avhich would ruin their commerce 
and port as they had ruined all the commerce and 
every port in the Spanish possessions. Ulloa issued 
a decree which in this respect realized their worst 
fears. The merchants in a body presented a petition 
to the superior council, ^Jraying for a suspension of 
the decree until they could be heard upon it. The 
signatures attached to the petition represented the 
most influential names in the colony. To-day tliey 
still distinguish the elite of Creole families. The 
memorial was forwarded to Ulloa, who, in an official 
report, expressed his opinion of it as : "A kind of 
manifesto, of people who pretend to nothing less than 
to make terms with their own sovereign, and whose 



NEW ORLEANS. 99 

expressions, far from being supplicating and respect- 
ful, take on the imperious and insolent tone of a 
menace." Paying no heed to it, he proceeded in 
September to the Balise, to await the coming of his 
affianced bride, the Marquise d'Abrado, one of the rich- 
est heiresses of Peru, and, according to report, beauti- 
ful even beyond tlie usual fortune of heiresses. She 
kept him waiting seven months, and for that time the 
Balise became the centre of government, Aubr}^ mak- 
ing periodical visits to it. During one of these he 
signed a secret act putting Ulloa in possession of the 
colony, and authorizing him to substitute the Spanish 
flag for the French whenever he wished. 

Relieved from the hated presence of the Spaniard, 
the citizens had a breathing spell, and strange to say, 
began to hope again that the mother country had re- 
considered her act or would do so. Ulloa returned 
with his bride, married to him by private ceremony at 
the Balise. There had been some social expectations 
entertained from the advent of the Marquise in the city. 
She, however, immured herself in her hotel, associated 
only with her own attendants, repulsed all advances from 
society, shunned the Creole ladies publicly, ignored them 
privately, and would not even worship in a common 
church with them, attending mass only in her private 
chapel. In short, she proved herself, in her treatment of 
the ladies of the place, only too apt an imitator of her 
husband's hauteur and arrogance with the men, and so 
added the last straw to the burden of the intolerable. 

Milhet arrived at last ! He gave an account of his 
humiliating failure. Popular disappointment and cha- 
grin flamed into a fury of passion, which swept discre- 
tion and judgment before it. There was to be heard 



100 NEW ORLEANS. 

in the streets nothing but loud voicings of the hatred of 
Spain and the loathing of the yoke about to be put upon 
them. Calm was completely destroyed from one end of 
the colony to the other ; the wildest excitement pre- 
vailed, meetings were held everywhere, in which heated 
addresses inflamed still more the violence of feeling. As 
in every other revolution, a woman furnishes the nucleus 
of action. In the upper outskirts of the city about where 
Common and Carondelet streets cross to-day, was the 
elegant villa and spacious gardens of Madame Pradel, 
a widow, beautiful, rich, and intellectual. She was 
attached, it was whispered, in a secret love to Foucaut, 
the royal commissary, one of the most ardent of the 
revolutionists. The establishment had all the privacy 
of isolation and seclusion, and was a most charming 
gathering spot for the leaders of the people, Lafreniere, 
the two Noyans, De Viller^, Masan, Marquis, Foucaut, 
and others. After a luxurious supper, they would leave 
their hostess and retire to the garden, and there, in the 
fragrant obscurity of the magnolia groves, discuss the 
situation, and prepare, point by point, the policy to be 
adopted. Their first move was to invite the country 
again to send delegates to another grand meeting to be 
held in the capital. 

This second assembly was in all respects the same as 
the first. As before, Lafreniere took the lead, or had 
it assigned to him. He made a speech with his charac- 
teristic power and eloquence, and was ably seconded by 
the delegate Milhet and his brother, and by Doucet, a 
young lawyer recently arrived from France. The pro- 
ceedings culminated in an address to the superior coun- 
cil calling upon it to declare Ulloa an usurper for having 
exercised authority without exhibiting his powers to 



NEW ORLEANS. 103 

the superior council, registering them, or otherwise 
promulgating them in a public manner, and, as such, 
ordering him out of the colony. The paper was signed 
by over five hundred names. It was printed by the 
public printer, on the order of Foucaut, and distributed 
throughout the parishes. The superior council took 
it under consideration, and ended in rendering the de- 
cree prayed for, ordering Ulloa to produce his authori- 
ties before the civil tribunal of the colony, or to take 
his departure from it, within a month. To such a man, 
and to such a dignitary, there was no alternative ; he 
prepared for the immediate departure of himself and 
household. 

Aubry, whose ideas of independence lay strictly 
within the limits of military subordination, did what 
he could at first to prevent, then to mitigate, what he 
considered an outrageous breach of discipline. He 
expostulated with the citizens, enlightened them about 
the inviolate majesty of kings, warned them of retrib- 
utive consequences. In vain. The citizens would 
not, or could not, understand him. To all of his rep- 
resentations they had a legal answer, and they stood 
firm in their position, their feet planted on their incon- 
testable theory of the supremacy in the colony of the 
civil tribunal. Aubry then did what he could to throw 
a semblance of dignity around the expulsion. At the 
head of his soldiers he escorted Ulloa and his house- 
hold to the levee, saluted his embarkation, and stationed 
sentries to guard his ship. 

That night there was a wedding feast in one of the 
wealthiest houses of the city. Banqueting and dancing 
had filled the hours and prolonged the revels, and day 
was about to break before the last of the guests stepped 



104 NEW ORLEANS. 

into the street ; a noisy band of meriy youths; — frolick- 
ing, singing, laughing, as they passed along by the 
silent houses. They came to the levee. In the silver 
light of dawn, the river lay veiled in mist, out of which, 
grim and ugly and forbidding, arose the frigate con- 
taining the Spaniard and his people. 

" See," cried one, ''the morning star ! It heralds the 
last day of the Spaniard's rule." The band stopped and 
looked. The temptation was irresistible to young mad- 
heads. The cables of the frigate were stealthily cut. 
After one thrilling moment, the great bulk began to 
move, yield to the current, which, as if the Mississippi 
too were French and factional, stronger and stronger 
urged its way, until it bore the vessel out to midstream, 
and started it triumphantly down the river. Then the 
watching crowd threw caps in air, and broke into wild 
huzzas. The victory seemed brilliant, the joy of it was 
radiant. 

Still acting in their representative character, the 
committee of citizens who had addressed the council 
published a manifesto to their constituents, giving the 
account of what they had done. It was scattered broad- 
cast throughout the colony. A copy of it and of all the 
proceedings and addresses, with an explanatory and pro- 
pitiatory letter from Aubry, was sent by special despatch 
to France, to the Prime Minister. Ulloa also received 
a copy, which he enclosed to his government with his 
report of the rebellion, as he called it. He named the 
" conspirators : " Lafreniere, Foucaut, the two Noyans, 
the two Milhets, and Viller^, summing them up con- 
temptuously enough as "most of them children of Can- 
adians who had come to Louisiana, axe on shoulder, to 
make their living by the work of their hands ; " and he 



NEW ORLEANS. 105 

mentions Madame PradeFs villa as the place of their 
meeting and consultation, with the gossip of Foucaut's 
love for her. 

A momentary calm, like the still pause between the 
blasts of a hurricane, fell over Louisiana and the Loui- 
sianians while awaiting a response from France. Surely 
the king would now reconsider ! They had proved 
their mettle, shown that they would not, could not, 
pass under Spanish rule. They had committed no vio- 
lence, but in an orderly, legal manner expelled the 
intruder, keeping among them, for the better regula- 
tion of the financial accounts between the two nations, 




the three Spanish officials, Gayarr J, Loyola, and Navarro. 
France, at any rate, could not but stand by her sons. 

But there was some uncertainty in their hope, and 
some uneasiness in their calm. There was much private 
discussion and prognostication, and the leaders must have 
had more and more frequent deliberations in the gar- 
dens of Madame Pradel. It was in that place and in 
that emergency of doubt and anxiety, that they consid- 
ered the proposition of defying both European powers, 
and erecting Louisiana into a representative govern- 
ment of the people, after the manner of the Swiss 
republic. One of the De Noyans, Bienville's namesake 



106 NEW OBLEANS. 

it was, Noyan de Bienville he was called, undertook a 
secret mission to Pensacola, to sound the British min- 
ister there on the attitude he would assume in such an 
eventuality. A British governor, however, at that 
period, was the last one in the world from whom 
encouragement might be expected by revolting colo- 
nies. He not only rebuffed the republican missionary, 
but hastened to transmit the confidence to Spain. The 
republican idea once launched, however, gained such 
headway in the city and country, that the monarchists 
became alarmed and an elaborate memorial was printed, 
combating any such change of government. 




CHAPTER VII. 



/~\N the morning of July 24th, 1769, a private messen- 
^-^ ger came post haste from the Balise, announcing 
the arrival there of a great armament under the com- 
mand of Count O'Reilly, lieutenant-general of the 
armies of Spain. The midnight following, a Spanish 
officer, Don Francisco Bouligny, landed, bringing from 
Count O'Reilly the oflicial announcement that he was 
coming up the river to take possession of the colony 
for Spain. 

There was no further doubt about the matter now. 
Nothing was to be expected from France. She had 
abandoned the colony without advice or warning, to the 
punishment of Spain. The will of the people, conven- 
tions, speeches, memorials, manifestoes, plans, conspira- 
cies, theories of government, ... it all lifted like a 
mountain mist from the minds of the revolutionists, 
and left them staring at tiie bare reality, — a defence- 
less city of three thousand inliabitants, called to account 
by Spain, — Spain, the pitiless avenger of her majesty ! 

Lafr^niere, with his partisans, hastened to Aubry. 
After a hurried consultation, it was decided that a dep- 
utation of them should go to O'Reilly and personally 
make the best explanation possible of the expulsion of 
UUoa. As there had been no blood shed, it seemed to 

107 



108 NEW ORLEANS. 

Aubry that a prompt apology and subjection would be 
accepted as a settlement of the matter. Lafr^iiiere, 
Milhet, and Marquis accompanied the Spanish officer 
down the river, and by him were presented to O'Reilly 
who received them courteously. Lafr^niere, as spokes- 
man, boldly charged Ulloa with the blame of what had 
occurred, for not having presented his credentials, and 
not taking official possession of the colony before exer- 
cising authority in it. He stated that he now appeared 
as a representative from the Louisianians, bearing their 
professions of respect for the king of Spain, and their 
submission to him. 

O'Reilly responded kindly, and in general terms. 
The word "sedition" passing his lips. Marquis inter- 
rupted him : " That word," he said, " is not applicable 
to the colonists." O'Reilly kept the Creoles to dinner 
with him, and sent them away full of hope as to the 
past. 

Aubry, at midday, assembled the panic-stricken citi- 
zens in the Place d' Amies, and tranquilized their fears 
by an address, counseling prompt submission to the 
new authority. He also sent messages throughout the 
parishes, warning the colonists there against excitement 
or action. The report made by the deputation of their 
interview with O'Reilly, was calming, and the city, after 
forty-eight hours of extreme agitation, sank the follow- 
ing night into the much-needed repose of sleep. 

The dawn of the 18th August revealed the Spanish 
fleet at anchor, in front of the city, the frigate bearing 
O'Reilly surrounded by twenty-three other vessels. At 
noon the drums beat the general alarm, and the troops 
royal and the militia marched from their barracks to 
the Place d'Armes, and formed facing the river. 



NEW on LEANS, 109 

Count O'Reilly, in all the pomp of representative 
majesty, heralded by music, preceded by silver maces, 
and ft)llowed by a glittering staff, descended tlie gang- 
way from his ship to the levee, and, advancing to Aubry, 
presented his credentials from the king of Spain and 
his orders to receive the colony. Three thousand Span- 
ish soldiers tiled after him from the other vessels to tlie 
levee, and formed on the three sides of the Place. The 
credentials and powers were read aloud to the citizens 
assembled, an anxious, nervous crowd. Aubry, after a 
proclamation releasing the colonists from their alle- 
giance to France, presented the keys of the city to 
O'Reilly. The French flag was lowered, the Spanish 
raised ; the Spanish vessels saluted with their guns, the 
soldiers fired off their muskets and .shouted " Viva el 
Rey ! " The French guards were relieved by Spanish 
guards. The Spanish and French officers then in pro- 
cession crossed tlie open space to the Cathedral, where 
a Te Deum was celebrated. 

The ceremonies terminated with a grand parade of 
the Spanish troops, whose stern bearing, rigid discipline, 
and glittering equipments awed the crowds on the 
banquettes of the streets through which they passed. 

O'Reilly installed himself in one of the handsomest 
houses of the place, and maintained his viceregal 
assumptions. Seated on an elevated canopied chair of 
state, he gave audiences, held receptions, and received 
what he regarded as the submission of the people. The 
old half tender patriarchal pomposity of De Vaudreuil 
was rude and savage in com})arison. Acting upon the 
hint of Aubry to pa}^ their respects promptly, the colo- 
nists flocked in numbers to the receptions, accompanied 
by their wives and daughters, who, with the responsi- 



no NE\F ORLEANS. 

bility and secret apprehensions upon them for their 
husbands and brothers, lavished, with the feminine 
prodigality of such emergencies, personal charms, taste 
in dress, Avitchery of manners — everything to throw 
the seductive glamour of a social function over the 
grimness of a military ceremony. 

Count O'Reilly maintained a graciousness of demean- 
our that surpassed even the most sanguine expectations. 
He had, however, on the day of his arrival, privately 
written to Aubry, demanding entire information, with 
all pertaining documents, respecting the expulsion of 
UUoa ; and the French captain, cringing with instinc- 
tive soldierly subjection, under the whip-hand of military 
authority, was furnishing all, and more than the Sj)an- 
ish general required, to justify the predetermination with 
which he sailed from Havana. The "• chiefs of the crimi- 
nal enterprise," as Aubry designated it, were the richest 
and most distinguished men of the city, — Laf rdniere, 
Attorney-General Masan Chevalier of St. Louis, Mar- 
quis, retired commandant of Swiss troops Noyan, retired 
captain of cavalry, Bienville, brother of Noyan and son- 
in-law of Lafreniere, ensign of marine, Viller^, brother- 
in-law of Lafreniere, captain of the militia of the C6te 
des AUemands. The lawyer Doucet was named as the 
author of the manifesto. Aubry made some attempt to 
exculpate Foucaut. 

On the 21st of August a grand levee was held in the 
viceregal hotel. All the above-named gentlemen pre- 
senting themselves by invitation, were received with 
more than usual courtesy by O'Reilly, who suavely 
invited them to follow him into an adjoining room. It 
was filled with Spanish bayonets. Throwing off his 
mask, O'Reilly then denounced his Creole guests as 



NEW ORLEANS. 



Ill 



rebels and conspirators against the king of Spain, and 
ordered the guards to march tliem to the various places 
of imprisonment he had selected for them. Caresse, 
joint author with Lafr^niere of the address to the 
council, the two Milhets, Petit, who had particijijated in 
word and deed with the revolutionists, Poupet, the 




OU Q^tewj. 






T?ue. <aw.H»vln 



treasurer of the conspiracy, Hardy de Boisblanc, one of 
the council who commanded the departure of Ulloa, and 
Brand, the royal printer, wlio had printed the various 
documents, were also arrested and lodged in prison. 
Villere, at the time of O'Reilly's arrival, was on his 



112 NEW ORLEANS. 

plantation at the Cote des Allemands. His first 
impulse was to throw himself under the j)rotection 
of the British flag, at Manchac, but a letter from 
Aubry quieted his apprehensions and advised him, on 
the contrary, to come to New Orleans. As flight 
seemed a confession of guilt, this course was more 
acceptable to Villere, and lie set out at once for 
the city. At the Tchoupitoulas gate he was arrested 
by the Spanish guard and carried aboard the Span- 
ish frigate lying in the river. Madame Viller^, a 
daughter of the Chevalier d'Arensbourg, hearing of 
her husband's arrest, hastened with all speed after 
him, and taking a skiff, had herself rowed out to the 
frigate. She was ordered away by the sentinels. 
Villere, confined below, hearing the supplicating voice 
of his wife, and fearing some insult, attenijited to rush 
past his guard and get on deck. He fell, transflxed 
with a bayonet. It is a tradition that to convince the 
wife of her husl)and's death, his garment, wet with blood, 
was thrown into her skiff, while a sailor cut the rope 
that held it to the frigate. 

'O'Reilly's assessors conducted the trial in a room of 
the barracks. Foucaut's plea that as a royal officer of 
France he was accountable only to her laAvs, was allowed. 
The charge against Braud, the royal printer, was also 
similarly remitted. 

The other prisoners attempted no defence. They 
denied the jurisdiction of the tribunal before which 
they were arraigned, and protested that tlie offences 
with which they were cliarged were committed while 
the flag of France was waving over them. The trial 
being conducted to a close, satisfactory to the judgment 
at least of O'Reilly, he, on the 24th day of October, 



NEW ORLEANS. 113 

rendered the sentence in the presence of three of his 
lieutenants, officiating as witnesses. Lafr^niere, Milhet, 
and Marquis (his guests at the Balise), Noyan de Bien- 
ville, and Caresse were condemned to be conducted 
to the place of execution on asses with ropes around 
their necks, to be hanged, and their bodies to remain 
hanging until otherwise ordered ; Petit was to be 
imprisoned for life ; jVIasan and Doucet for twelve 
years ; Hardy de Boisblanc, Poupet, and Jean Milhet, 
for six. The property of all was confiscated to the 
crown. Viller^, being dead, was represented at the trial 
by an "avocat a sa memoire" — and his memory, all 
that was left to Spanish jurisdiction, was, in conformity 
to his sentence, condemned to perpetual infamy. 

The whole city, men and women of every rank and 
class, threw themselves before OTleilly, in an appeal for 
at least a suspension of the sentence until royal clem- 
ency could be invoked. He was inexorable. On the 
representation of the Spanish assessors that there Avas 
no executioner but a negro who was disqualified from 
officiating upon whites ; tlie sentence was modified to 
shooting, with the stipulation, however, that it was to 
retain the infamy of hanging. For a similar reason, per- 
hajjs, the clause about the asses was ignored. The sen- 
tence was carried into effect the next day, 25th October, 
1769, in the barracks yard. The only eye-witnesses were 
the Spanish soldiers, officers, interpreters, and the sheriff, 
whose official account furnishes the only description 
we have of it. He testifies that at three o'clock of the 
afternoon the prisoners were taken from their place of 
confinement in the quarters of the regiment of Lisbon, 
and, tied by the arms, were conducted under a good and 
sure guard of officers and grenadiers to the place of 



114 NEW OB LEANS. 

execution, where a large body of troops stood formed 
in a hollow square ; the sentence was read to them in 
French and English ; they were then put in position, 
and fired upon. It was said that Noyan de Bienville, 
young, handsome, and but recently married to a daugh- 
ter of Lafreniere, awoke enough compassion in O'Reilly 
to be offered his life, on condition that he would 
abandon his companions ; he refused. Lafreniere, firm 
and heroic to the end, exhorted his son-in-law to send 
the scarf he wore to his young wife, that she might pre- 
serve it and give it to his son when he became a man. 
All protested against being tied to tlie stakes, lafre- 
niere gave the command to fire. 

From daylight, guards had been doubled at every gate 
and station in the city. The troops were kept in the 
public places and along the levee under arms and pre- 
pared for action. Those of the citizens who could, fled in 
horror and anguish to the country. The rest remained 
inside closed doors and windows. All signs and sounds 
of life were suppressed. The explosion of musketry 
that announced the end reverberated as through a death 
chamber. It was the blackest day the city had ever 
known. It is still a day that lies under a pall in mem- 
ory. No historian with French blood can review it 
unmoved. Martin breaks through his studied calm 
and impartiality, after his account of it, with : " Pos- 
terity, the judge of men in power, will doom this act to 
public execration. No necessity demanded it, no policy 
justified it," and De Vergennes, the cool-headed sage of 
Louis XVL, cannot in writing of it forbear the cry to 
his sovereign : " Ah, Sire ! perliaps the names of these 
five unfortunate Frenchmen who were executed never 
came to the ears of your majesty ; deign to throw a few 



NEW OBLEANS. 115 

flowers on their tomb ; deign to say, ' Lafr^niere, Noyan, 
Caresse, Viller^, Marquis, and Milhet, were massacred by 
the orders of barbarous O'Reilly for having regretted 
leaving my service and for having wished to sustain my 
laws.'" 

O'Reilly wrote truly to the Spanish minister, the 
Marquis de Grimaldi, that the remembrance of the sen- 
tence would never be effaced. He extolled the neces- 
sity, justice, and clemency of it, and declared that it 
amply atoned for the insult offered by the province to 
the dignity and authority of the king of Spain. 

The capital now lay cruslied and stunned in his hands. 
When consciousness returned, the Spanish yoke had been 
securely fastened upon it, and Spanish reconstruction was 
an accomplished fact. Instead of a superior council, there 
was a cabildo, with regidores, alcaldes, alguazils, alferez, 
and all the framework of justice and laws prescribed by 
the Recopilacion de los Indios; including the Spanish 
oath of office, swearing: "before God and the Holy Cross 
and the Evangel, to sustain and defend the mystery of the 
Immaculate Conception of our Lady the Virgin Mary." 

The Spanish language was made the official organ, 
not only for earthly, but for spiritual intercourse ; and 
the Ursuline sisters, it is on record, shed bitter tears at 
having to make their devotions in a foreign tongue and 
from foreign prayer books. Spanish postulants were 
sent to them from Cuba, and French ones were not 
allowed to join the community, without previous per- 
mission from Madrid. Spanish priests were imported 
to serve in the churches ; the Santa Hermandad was 
established and Spanish names filled all of O'Reilly's 
appointments. 

Notwithstanding the enduring sobriquet of " Bloody," 



116 NEW ORLEANS. 

affixed to his name, there are some items in the civic 
memory to O'Keillj's credit. By taxes on hotels, tav- 
erns, coffee-liouses, etc., and on spirituous liquors, he 
assigned a regular revenue to the city. The butchers, 
and tJiis is never omitted in local chronicles, voluntarily 
engaged to pay the city three hundred and seventy 
dollars annually, solemnly pledging themselves not, 
therefore, to increase the price of beef, except in cases 
of absolute necessity. A levee fund was obtained by 
a tax upon shipping ; and O'Reilly donated to the city, 
in the name of his royal master, all the vacant lots on 
each side of the Place d' Amies, between the levee and 
Chartres street, the land that was afterwards rented in 
perpetuity to Don Andres Almonaster. 

Tlie Creoles met with a stern and cutting coldness 
any attempt at social intercourse on his part. He gained 
access only to those houses whose doors were forced 
open by official obligation or private interest. It was 
to such a house that his carriage, escorted by dragoons, 
was seen driving frequently up the coast. One day, 
when his manner or temper had provoked his hostess 
into a repartee too sharp for his courtesy, he lost self- 
command so far as to say : " Madame, do you forget 
who I am ? " " No, sir," answered the lady, with a low 
bow, " but I have associated with others higher than 
you, Avho, never forgetting Avhat was due to others, 
had no occasion to remind others Avhat was due to 
them." The count instantly and curtly took his leave, 
but returned the next day with a good-humoured smile 
and an apology. 

It was not the only rebuff received by Don Alexander 
in good part. Among the slaves left by Noyan de 
Bienville, was one who had a local celebrity as cook. 



NEW ORLEANS. 



117 



O'Reilly sent for him. " You belong now," said he, 
" to the king of Spain, and until you are sold I shall 
take you into my service." " Do not dare it," answered 
the slave ; " you killed my master. I would poison you. " 
O'Reilly dismissed him unpunished. It was with a 
heartfelt sigh of relief that the colony saw O'Reilly take 




his departure, just a year and three months after he 
came to it, 

Don Luis de Unzaga y Aurenzago, colonel of infantry 
in the Spanish army, took command. Under his mild 
and easy administration, the city recovered from the 
despair into which O'Reilly's severity had plunged it. 
Indeed, O'Reilly's severity had produced among his 
own officers a reaction of compassion towards the un- 



118 JSfEW ORLEANS. 

fortunate Louisianians, with whom they soon entered 
into friendly relations. They were not O'Reillys and 
O'Reilly was not a Spaniard ; and so it was not difficult 
to direct public animosity towards the Irishman, and 
when he sailed away he carried it with him. 

Creole names soon began to appear again in the 
official lists. St. Denis, and De la Chaise, a brother- 
in-law of A^illere, accepted the appointment as alcal- 
des under the cal)ildo. Social intercourse completed 
in its best manner the Avork of conciliation. Unzaga 
married a Creole, a Maxent, relative of Lafr^niere. His 
officers followed his example : Gayarr^, the son of the 
royal comptroller, married a Grandpre ; the intendant 
Odoardo, her sister ; Bouligny, a d'Auberville ; Colonel 
de Piernas, a De Porneuf. National and political 
differences became not only obliterated, but amal- 
gamated (as we have more than once seen since) in a 
common Creolism ; and by the time a few years had 
passed, all could co-operate with a healthy unanimity in 
the war betAveen the Spanish and the French Capuchins. 

The triumph of Father Genovaux over the Jesuits 
will be recalled, and his warrior character. His triumph, 
however, though brilliant, was brief, for the superior 
council, finding him opposed to their decree against 
Ulloa, expelled him from the colony as a disturber 
of the public peace, which, in the state of the jjul)- 
lic mind at that time, any friend of the Spaniard 
must necessarily have been. Father Dagobert, there- 
fore, became superior of the Capuchins. One can 
hardly describe Father Dagobert, without plagiarism, 
for in our local literature, in poetry, in prose, in 
song, and in history and in romance, he has been so 
Avorthily celebrated and so daintily rhymed, that his 



NEW OliLEANS. 119 

eulogist can invent no new phrases. He was, in prac- 
tical parlance, the spiritual director, of all others, for 
the comnuinity committed to his charge. The very 
testimony of his enemies proves this. He had come 
into the colony when very young, and, christening, con- 
fessing, marrying, and burying year after year, he had 
founded in the hearts of the community that jurisdic- 
tion which only the friend and pastor can create for 
himself, and one in comparison witli wdiich any appoint- 
ment of bishop is insignificant. He was not only be- 
loved of all, but he loved all, in the city and its 
environs. It was a notable fact, and of common 
remark, that the spiritual and temporal affairs liad 
never agreed so harmoniously as under Father Dago- 
bert's care. No ceremony, public or private, was com- 
plete without him, no feast a true festivity unless his 
jovial face and figure appeared among the guests. 
And, it must always be remembered, no one knew bet- 
ter than he what real feasting was. And so, living 
along with his flock for half a century. Father Dagobert 
looked forward with equanimity to an old age of ease 
and comfort, — that ease and comfort whicli he would 
have been the last to destroy, even to disturb, in others. 
But there is a day of reckoning for the good as well 
as the bad. A short time after the Spanish pos- 
session of the city, the Capuchin convent was as- 
tounded by the appearance of its old superior, Father 
Genovaux, — Father Genovaux, and yet not he ; so 
humble and patient and penitent he appeared, with 
eyes cast to the ground and voice barely raised above 
it, to beg admittance as an hum])le servitor of the Lord, 
into the house which he had once ruled as superior, 
from which he had been so tyrannously expelled. 



120 :n'ew obleans. 

Father Dagobert gave what welcome he could to a 
Capuchm so far removed from liis own ideals of grace, 
for, good-natured and tolerant as he was, there must 
have entered into his debonair life some irksomeness 
from the presence of the returned brother, who went 
about with such meekness and asceticism, discharging 
his duties with such painful exactitude, when not 
wrapt in prayer or in study of the Spanish language. 
There were also disquieting rumours in the community 
that Spanish Capuchins were to be sent to New Orleans. 
It is to be hoped that the good men prepared them- 
selves for the worst, for it happened. In 1772 a band 
of Spanish Capuchins arrived, under charge of Father 
Cirilo, who was also charged by the new spiritual 
authority of Louisiana, Don Santiago de Hecheverria, 
bishop of Cuba, to investigate the affairs of the Church 
and the state of religion in the colony. 

Father Dagobert, at the head of his Capuchins, duti- 
fully went in procession to the levee landing, to receive 
the new comers, and escorted them to his hospitable 
convent. Then, as the Gayarre chronicle proceeds to 
relate. Father Genovaux doffed his garb of humility, 
and, raising his head in his old pride and dominance, 
spoke, in castigating severity, of the reformation in 
store for the convent ; how that ignorance, profanity, 
wickedness, and senility would now be driven out, and 
virtue, learning, zeal, and religion reinstated. And 
forthwith he betook himself to the Spanish Capuchins, 
that his influence might make good his threats. 

He must have been of great assistance to Father 
Cirilo in his task, at least so we think as we read 
the Spanish Capuchin's report to his diocesan at 
Havana : — 



NEW ORLEANS. 121 

" The people of this province are, in general, religiously disposed, 
and seem anxious for the salvation of their souls. They observe 
a profound silence during divine worship, and when the Most Holy 
Ghost is brought out, which is on the principal holidays, both sexes 
prostrate themselves on the ground. With regard to the women, 
they are more honest than in Spain, and live more in accord with 
the principles of the Church. . . . But the deportment of these 
. . . how shall I designate them? For I certainly cannot call 
Capuchins those whom I consider unworthy this holy name. In a 
true Capuchin . . . there is naught to be seen but austerity and 
poverty. But such is not the case with these men. In their dress, 
their shirts, breeches, stockings, and shoes, they resemble laity 
much more than members of their religious order. They say they 
have a dispensation from the Pope ... it could never go so far 
as to authoi'ize a watch in the fob, a clock striking the hour in the 
bedchaml)er, and another one, which cost two hundred and seventy 
dollars, in the refectory. Nor do I believe that they have permis- 
sion from our sovereign lord, the Pope, to possess so many silver 
spoons and forks that it is doubtful whether your grace owns the 
like. Not only have they silver spoons of the ordinary size, but 
they have smaller ones to take coffee with, as if wooden ones were 
not good enough for Capuchins. I will not speak of the furniture 
of their rooms, nor of the luxury of their table. (The French 
Capuchins ruled teal duck as fish and ate it on fast days.) Since 
our arrival, and on our account, they have somewhat modified their 
good living, but their table is still reputed to be better than any 
other in the capital. Very often they do not eat at the common 
refectory, but invite one another to dine in their private apart- 
ments. . . . 

The confessionals, in shape and construction, are more decent 
and l)etter than ours in Spain . . . but none of the priests confess 
iu the confessionals, but in the vestry, where they sit in an arm- 
cliair, by the side of which the penitent kneels. On witnessing 
such an abuse, I could not help asking for the cause, and I was 
told it was owing to the heat. ... As to their going to balls, I 
do not see any probability of it, as the youngest of them is fifty 
years old, but they frequently attend dinner parties, particularly 
when they perform marriage ceremonies. The report is that these 
Capuchins play cards. . . ." 



122 NEW ORLEANS. 

Father Genovaiix was not one to forget the loyal 
friendship of the Ursulines for the Jesuits ; and so the 
report proceeds ! — 

" With regard to the nuns, they live as they always 
have done, without being cloistered, and as if they were 
not nuns at all." 

Then, after these general shots over the whole target, 
he aims at the bull's eye : — 

" Father Dagobert forgot to notify the faithful of the coming of 
ember week. His attention being called to the omission, he solved 
the difficulty by transferring the observance of the sacred days to 
the following w^eek . . . arrogating to himself more power than the 
Pope. ... He made light of the Bull of the Santa Cruzada 
(granting indulgence to Spaniards contributing money or service 
towards fighting against infidels). This is how P^'ather Dagobert 
lives . . . rises at six o'clock in the morning, says, or does not say, 
mass . . . takes his three-cornered hat, a very superfluous and 
unworthy appendage for a Capuchin, and goes to a somewhat sus- 
picious house, where he plays until dinner, — that meal over, he 
resumes his occupation until supper-time. . . . So great (in short) 
is the detestable negligence of these men, that I think they are the 
disciples of Luther or Calvin. Not only ought Dagobert to be 
deprived of his charge, but he ought also to be expelled from the 
colony, to be punished according to his deserts, and sentenced to a 
proper penance for his personal faults and the enormous sins lie 
has caused some of his flock to commit, and for wliich there are 
the gravest reasons to believe that those who have died are now in 
hell." 

Unzaga, who was accused of partiality to the French, 
wrote to the captain-general of Cuba that the difficulty 
was all a struggle for power, and that the Spanish 
priests were as bad as the French. The whole contro- 
versy was submitted to the home government, which 
wisely temporized in the matter, signifying that conces- 
sions must be made on both sides. The hint was taken. 



NEW ORLEANS. 



123 



Father Dagobert, although he spoke of retiring to 
France with his brethren, was persuaded to remain 
in the province as vicar-general — it must be inferred 
with a reformed community. Certain it is, that the 
iiniocent third party suffered, as it always does in a 
compromise between rival factions, for we read now of 



/A ''/■" 



T/sr- f 



\m 



y M[L\W/A 

r ■""' ■ i leaf I if k 




©Id §pa.n>.%K Qjvittyo 



the colonists' being threatened with excommunication, 
tem})oral confiscation, imprisonment, and discipline of 
the Inquisition, if they did not take the sacrament at 
Easter. 

Across our civic panorama now dashes the brilliant 
figure of young Bernardo de Galvez. The son of the 



124 NEW ORLEANS. 

viceroy of Mexico, nephew of tlie secretary of state 
and president of tlie Council of the Indies, he had all 
the prestige of family influence behind him, and although 
but twenty-one years of age, he had the genius of the 
young for happy indiscretions. He it was who, profit- 
ing by the war between Great Britain and her colonies, 
not only aided the latter secretly, by allowing supplies 
of ammunition and food for them to pass through New 
Orleans, but even allowed the use of the river for Amer- 
ican incursions into British territory. And when the 
longed-for opportunity came ; a declaration of Avar 
between Spain and England, he it was who, burying all 
thought of O'Reilly in the memory of the brave, assem- 
bled the citizens of New Orleans in the public square, 
made them a speech, drawn sword in one hand, and 
royal commission in the other, and so aroused their 
martial ardour that he gained a little army of volunteers 
from them, by popular acclamation, whites, blacks, and 
Indians enlisting. And with them he conquered the 
river country as far as Natchez, swept Lake Pontchar- 
train of English vessels, captured Mobile by a brilliant 
coup de mam, and closed the campaign by a last triiunph 
at Pensacola . . . driving the English everywhere be- 
fore him — and fixing forever his own reputation and 
the military ^^restige of the Louisianians. 

It is an episode for Calliope, not Clio, and the muse 
of the lyre has not disdained it. Fortunately she had 
a votary in Louisiana, Julian Poydras de Lalande, a 
young French Protestant, who emigrated from St. 
Domingo to Louisiana, in time only to witness its trans- 
fer to Spain, sealed with the blood of the five patriots. 
He exemplified the dictum in the time of LaAV, that for 
a Frenchman to make a fortune in Louisiana, he must 



NEW ORLEANS. 125 

arrive there shipwrecked. He furnished himself with 
a pedler's stock in New Orleans and started up the 
coast on foot, his pack strapped to his back. This was 
the beginning of great commercial connections all o^'er 
the Mississippi Valley. Into his pedler's pack (if the 
fanciful figure be permitted) Poydras put all the 
favour of his handsome face and j)leasing address, 
and all the unswerving morality, indefatigable energy, 
unimpeachable honour, the generosity, the charity 
— all the virtues, in fact, which distinguished liis 
long after-life and all the picturesque and poetical 
impulses that made him the lover of Clio and the bard 
of Galvez. Out of it came plantations, slaves, palatial 
houses, honours, wealth to las family, and princely 
charities to his state and city. There may be those 
who would criticise the poetry or the poem ; but they 
are not Louisianians. And, at any rate, who would 
criticise either Galvez or Poydras ? Do we not remember 
him, the latter, through our great-grandj^arents, in his 
venerable and rather melancholy old age, dressed always 
in his Louis XV. costume, dispensing the kindly hos- 
pitality of his sumptuous plantation to all, from the 
duke of Orleans, stopping in 1798 to visit him, to the 
pedler trudging along the coast, as he had done, pack on 
Ijack ; or voyaging up and down the river in the Hatboat 
that he had furnished and equipped in such wondrously 
luxurious comfort ; or posting to Washington, to con- 
fer, by invitation, with the president about the state of 
Louisiana. He died as no man had yet died in Louisiana, 
leaving an endowment in perpetuity to charity ; found- 
ing an asylum for orphan bo3's in the city, bequeathing 
forty thousand dollars to the Charity Hospital, thirty 
thousand dollars to establish a college for orphan boys 



126 NEW ORLEANS. 

in liis parish of Pointe Coupee, thirty thousand apiece 
to the parishes of W. Baton Rouge and Pointe Couj)ee, 
the annual interest of which was to be given to the young 
girls without fortunes, married within the jenr ; and 
making the attempt, unfortunately it proved abortive, 
to set his slaves free. 

As for Galvez. In the poem, the God of the Mis- 
sissippi sends Scesaris, the nymph, to find out the 
cause of the tumult which, assaulting his ears, has 
broken into his slumber. Scesaris reports : — 

" Je I'ai vu ce Heros, qui cause tes allarmes, 

II resemblait un Dieu, revetu de ses amies, 
Son Panache superbe, alloit au gre du vent, 

Et ses cheveux epars lui servoient d'ornement. 
Un maintain noble et fier annonc^oit son courage, 

L'heroique vertu, brilloit sur son visage, 
D'une main il tenoit son Sabre eblouissant, 

De I'autre il retenoit son Coursier bondissant." 

Scesaris' description of the intrepid army of Louisi- 
anians, white and coloured, and their brave deeds, 
•under such a leader, excited the God of the Mississippi, 
even as it does us to-day. He interrupted her and 
"laisse eclater sa joie" promising in admiration of 
Galvez, — 

" Je dirai a mes Eaux, de moderer leur cours, 
Et de fertiliser le lieu de son sejour. 
Par des sentiers de Fleurs qu'il parvienne a la Gloire. 
Que son nom soit ecrit, au Temple de menioire." 

To the great distress of the Louisianians, and partic- 
ularly of New Orleans, Galvez was promoted to suc- 
ceed his fatlier as Viceroy of Mexico. He, too, had 



NEW ORLEANS. 



127 



married a Creole, a sister of Unzaga's wife, and her 
surpassing loveliness of face and character is always 
mentioned as a factor in the reputation her husband 
acquired as being one of the most popular viceroys that 
Mexico ever had. He died at the age of thirty-eight, 
from a fall while hunting at his famous fortress Chateau 
which he had built for himself on the rock of Che- 
pultepec. He was succeeded in Louisiana by Don 
Estevan Miro. 







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CHAPTER VIII. 

A ND now our city, like a woman who has been won 
■^-^ to love her conqueror, began to assume the recon- 
struction that she had shed blood to resist. It was a 
time one loves to recall, picturesque, romantic, rich in 
all poetical growths of population and custom. It was 
this time that has most impressed its character on 
the external features of New Orleans. 

Don Estevan Miro, too, married a Creole, a De 
Macarty of a noble Irish family which had followed 
James II. to France. He continued the gentle, familiar 
administration of Unzaga and Galvez. One of his lirst 
acts was to free the streets from the lepers, wlio, gravi- 
tating to the city from all parts of the colon}', infested 
the alleyways and corners, darting out like hideous 
spectres, demanding, rather then begging, charity of the 
passers-by. He collected them all in a hospital which he 
built for them in the rear of the city, on the high land 
between the Metairie ridge and Bayou St. John, still 
designated by old authorities as " la terre aux Lepreux." 
It is said that under his humane treatment the pest 
almost disappeared, the patients in the hospital dimin- 

128 



NEW ORLEANS. 129 

ishing until none were left, and the useless building 
finally fell into decay. UUoa had made an attempt to 
confine the lepers at the Balise ; luit the popular indig- 
nation at what seemed the heartlessness of the measure 
forced him to desist. 

The conflagration, which in the history of every city 
furnishes the ashes for its Phainix rise, occurred in New 
Orleans on Good Friday, 1788. It started on Chartres 
street, near St. Louis, in the chapel of the house of Don 
Vincento Jose Nunez, the military treasurer of the 
colony, from a lighted candle falling against the lace 
draperies of the altar. Everything went before the 
flames, — church, schoolhouse, town-hall, vvatchtower, 
convent of Capuchins, dwellings, shops ; the heart of 
the vieux carre was as bare as when Pauger first laid 
line and rod to it. We can feel the disaster as though 
it happened but a month ago, through the medium of a 
quaint historical fragment in the Howard ^lemorial 
Library, the Gazette des Deux-Ponts of August, 1798, 
which curiously, and fortunately enough for us, had a 
correspondent on the spot : — 

" All the vigilance of the official chiefs and the prompt assist- 
ance which they brought to bear, were useless, and even the engines, 
many of which were burned by the heat of the flames at an 
incredible distance. In order to appreciate the horror of the 
conflagration, it suffices to say that in less than five hours eight 
hundred and sixteen buildings were reduced to ashes, comprising 
in the number all commercial houses except three, and the little 
that was saved was again lost, or fell prey to malefactors, the un- 
fortunate proprietors barely escaping with their lives. The loss 
is valued at three millions of dollars. In an affliction so cruel and 
so general, the only thing that can diminish om- grief, is that not a 
man perished. On the morning of the morrow, what a spectacle 
was to be seen : in the place of the flourishing city of the day be- 



130 NEW OBLEANS. 

fore, nothing but rubbish and lieaps of ruins, pale and trembling 
mothers, dragging their cliildren along by the hand, their despair 
not even leaving them the strength to weep or groan ; and persons 
of luxury, quality, and consideration, who had only a stupor and 
silence for their one ex2:)ression . But, as in most extremities, 
Providence always reserves secret means to temper them, this 
time we found, in the goodness and sympathy of the governor 
and the intendant, all the compassion and all the assistance that 
we could expect from generous hearts, to arrest our tears and pro- 
vide for our wants. They turned themselves to succouring us with 
so much order and diligence, that we were immediately relieved. 
Their private charities knew no limits, and the treasury of H. M. 
was opened to send away for assistance." 

There is an editorial comment on tlie communication, 
wliicli throws some light on the progress made in wliat 
Father Cirilo would have called religion and morals, 
under the Spanish regime. Tlie comment is this : — 

" The person who sent us these details adds that the fire taking 
place on Good Friday, the priests refused to allow the alarm to be 
rung, because on that day all bells must be dumb. If such an act 
of superstition had taken place at Constantinople, it would not 
have been astonishing. The absurd Mussulman belief in fatality 
renders sacred to them all the precepts drawn from the Alkoran ; 
but a civilized nation is not made to adopt maxims so culpable 
towards humanity, and this trait of fanatical insanity will surely 
not be approved by sensible people." 

What lay in the ashes was, at best, but an irregular, 
ill-built, French town. What arose from them was a 
stately Spanish city, proportioned with grace and built 
with solidity, practically the city as we see it to-day, 
and for which, first and foremost, we owe thanks to 
Don Andres Almonaster ; and may tlie Angelus Ijell 
from the Catliedral, Avhich times the perpetual masses 
for his soul, never fail to remind us of our obligation 
to him. 



NEW ORLEANS. 131 

Don Andres Ahnunaster y Roxas was an Andalusian 
of noble birth, who, coming to Louisiana at the begin- 
ning of the Spanish domination, received the appoint- 
ment of escribano publico, or notary public, an office 
rich in salary, perquisites, and business opportunities. 
He soon acquired wealth in it, or through it. He 
became an alcalde, and afterwards bought the honour- 
able rank of alferez royal, or royal standard bearer, a 
distinction which lasted for life, and gave him a sitting 
at all the meetings of the council board. He was mid- 
dle-aged when he came into the province, and, devoting 
sixteen years to making his fortune, he was past sixty 
before he married the beautiful young Creole girl, 
Louise de Laronde, in the parish church of New 
Orleans, in 1787, the year before it was destroyed by 
fire. 

Standing amid the ruins and ashes of the town, that 
had been kind to him with money, honours, and a beau- 
tit'id young wife, Don Andres had one of those inspira- 
tions which come at times to the hearts of millionaires, 
converting their wealth from mere coin into a living 
attribute. His first offer to the cabildo was to replace 
the schoolhouse. This was the first public school in 
New Orleans ; it was established by the government in 
1772, to teach the Spanish language, with Don Andreas 
Lopez de Armesto as director, Don Manuel Diaz de Lara 
professor of Latin, and Don Francisco de la Celena 
teacher of reading. 

After finishing the schoolhouse, Almonaster offered 
to rebuild the parish church, and did it, at a cost of fifty 
thousand dollars, and continuing his benefactions he 
replaced the old charity hospital of Jean Louis with a 
handsome building which cost one hundred and fourteen 



132 NEW ORLEANS. 

thousand dullars, cliaiiging its name to the one it now 
bears, Charity Hospital of 8t. Charles. He then filled 
in the still open space on each side of the church, by a 
convent for the Capuchins and a town hall, the Cabildo, 
and he added the chapel to the Ursuline convent. 

Nine years after his marriage, and as if indeed to 
reward the pious generosity of so good a Christian and 
citizen, Heaven sent a child to Don Andres, a daughter, 
Avho was christened, in the grand new Cathedral, Micaela 
Leonarda Antonia. Two years later, in the plenitude 
of his happiness and honour, Don Andres died and was 
l)aried in front of the altar of his Cathedral, where his 
name and lineage, and good deeds, coat of arms and 
motto, "A pesar de todos, venceremos los Godos," are 
cut as ineffaceably into the stone over his resting place, 
as, we trust, his remembrance is in the heart of his 
city. 

After the death of Don Andres, his story still went 
on. His beautiful young widow chose a second hus- 
band, and the charivari that was given her is historical. 
Tlie charivaris of New Orleans are historical, in that 
we read of them from the very beginnings of the city ; 
but this one is called the historical charivari, for it was 
greater than any that had gone before, and none that 
came after ever could surpass it. Three days and nights 
it pursued the beautiful widow and her husband up and 
down the city, to and fro, across the river. Finally, to 
get rid of it, they had to run away. 

Besides his largesse to the city, Don Andres had still 
wealth enough to dower his daughter with millions, so 
that Micaela, inheriting also the beauty of her mother, 
was an heiress such as the city could never even liave 
hoped to possess. It is said, one may add, naturally, 



MEW ORLEANS. 133 

that she fell in love Avith a young man in the city, but 
was not allowed to marry him. Instead, at sixteen, in 
1811, her hand was bestowed upon young Joseph Xavier 
Celestin Delfair de Pontalba, son of the Baron de Pon- 
talba ; and this carries us still further along in our chron- 
icle. The old Baron de Pontalba had, under French 
rule, been commandant at the Cote des Allemands. 
His city residence was on the corner of St. Peter street 
and the levee. Returning to France and joining his 
star to that of the great Napoleon, he had been en- 
nobled by him, and his son had been taken into the 
royal household as page to the emperor. When Napo- 
leon Bonaparte first took Louisiana into his schemes, 
he ordered his ministers to collect information on its 
resources. M. de Pontalba submitted a masterly me- 
morial to him on the subject ; fifteen days afterwards 
Napoleon had negotiated its cession from Spain. The 
marriage of his page with the Creole heiress was cele- 
brated with great pomp and ceremony, and the young 
couple proceeded immediately to Paris and took up 
their residence in a style so elegant that it became 
and is still a matter of local pride and great boasting to 
the good folk of Micaela's native place. 

The old Baron de Pontalba, haughty, severe, inordi- 
nately proud of his good French blood and of his devo- 
tion to the great emperor, lived in a magnificent chateau 
called Mont FEveque, outside of Paris, in as great a style 
as his daughter-in-law inside, and, to touch lightly on 
the gossip of that day in Paris, the two found more sub- 
jects of difference than agreement, in their dispositions. 
It was at Mont I'Eveque that occurred the sensation 
and mystery of a moment in Paris, — where no sensation 
lasts longer than a moment, — Madame de Pontalba was 



134 NEW ORLEANS. 

found one morning weltering in her blood on the floor 
of her chamber, her body torn with pistol shots — the 
old Baron sitting in his arm-chair in his room in the 
tower, dead. . . . By a miracle, Madame de Pontalba 
recovered carrying to her death the bullets in her body 
and maintaining to the end the prestige of her wealth, 
position, and indomitable will. Frequenting, and fre- 
quented by, the Faubourg St. Germain, she escaped 
none of the horror and excitement that filled the minds 
of the ancien rei/lme, when it became rumoured that 
the beautiful palace built by Louis XIV. for the Due du 
Maine, on the rue de Lille, was to be bought by the 
" Bande Noire," and razed to the ground ; the site to 
be filled with smaller buildings. With her Louisi- 
ana millions she bought the palace herself, and even 
attempted, with the vaulting ambition of women, to 
live in it. Only royal wealth and attendance could, 
however, properly fill the pile, — four hundred rooms, it 
contained, — so the new proprietor, submitting, as even 
royal personages must, to circumstances, demolished 
the palace herself, but reserved all its artistic wealth 
of carvings, columns, ornaments, marbles, for the new 
hotel which she built; a hotel of magnificent state, 
but more in proportion to her position and means. 
It was sold afterwards for five million francs to one 
of the Rothschilds. 

And here — her princely revenues from Louisiana 
being vastly increased, by profitable investments in 
France, — the daughter of the alferez real continued 
her role until it seems only the other day, in 1874, 
death rang down the curtain. And what a drama, 
what roles had she not seen acted on the stage round 
about her ! The fall, the double fall, of Bonaparte, the 



NEW ORLEANS. 



135 



Restoration, Louis XVIII., Charles X., Revolution, 
Louis Philippe, Second Republic, Second Empire, 
German triumph. Third Republic. 

But to return to Don Estevan Miro and his century. 
He also put his hand to rebuilding. Behind the Ca- 
bildo, filling all the space on St. Peter street, to within 
a few feet of Royal, a calaboza, " calaboose," was erected, 
a grim, two-story construction surrounded by walls of 



'■''vmami 







s> 



iS)ui 



-?«^. 



massive thickness, and filled with little cells and dun- 
geons, dark, fast, terrible beyond all possibility of 
need, it would seem, for the criminal capabilities of the 
place and the people. It was shut in by a huge iron 
gateway and ponderous doors, crossed and barred and 
checked with formidable hand wrought iron bars. Flank- 
ing the calaboose, almost as fierce and imposing, was the 
Arsenal, opening into St. Anthony's alley. And, the 
march of improvement once started, the handsome 



136 NEW OBLEANS. 

French barracks, begun by Kerlerec, on the old site, near 
the Ursuline convent, was completed with the addition 
of a new military hospital and chapel. And a wooden 
custom-house was built on the square filled to-day by 
its granite successor ; tlien, however, it stood on the 
river bank, just inside the public road. On the open 
levee space on the lower side of the Place d' Amies, 
wliere, from time out of mijid the market venders, 
Indians, negroes, hunters, trappers, had exposed their 
vegetables, fruits, skins, game, herbs, and baskets for 
sale, a shed, or butcher's market, was put up, the 
beginning of the arcades of the French market of 
to-day. 

A hotel for the governor arose on the corner of 
Toulouse and the levee, as we call it to-day. Old Levee 
street. And all over the burnt district the old resi- 
dences reappeared in their new Spanish garb, bricks 
and stones, arched windows and doorways, handwrought 
iron work, balconies, terraces, courtyards, everything 
broad rather than high, broad rooms, corridors, windows, 
doorways — some of them still standing entire, as their 
Spanish architect left them, others represented only by 
vestiges, a wall, window, or door, balcony or quadrangle, 
but all, to the very last segment, a benefaction to the 
eye, and a benediction to the Spaniard's domination, 
and, as has been said, first and foremost to Don Andres 
Almonaster. 

In the midst of the activity and bustle of the new 
energy, came the news of the death of Carlos III. and 
the accession of Carlos IV., and pompous memorial 
obsequies for the one event, and rich festivities for the 
other, were celebrated with great form. Hardly had 
Don Estevan and the city settled again into the comfort- 



J^EW OB LEANS. 137 

able routine of their respective habits, when the former 
received a reminder from the Okl World that a change 
of sovereigns represented something more than a cere- 
mony, even to a distant province. Padre Antonio de 
Sedella, a Spanish Capuchin arrived lately in the city, 
called uj)on the governor and exhiljited a commission to 
establish the Holy Office of the Inquisition in the city. 
He had made, he said, all of his preparations with the 
utmost secrecy and caution ; they were now complete 
and he was ready for action. So he notified the gov- 
ernor that he would soon, at some late hour of the night, 
call upon him for guards to make the necessary arrests. 
Don Estevan was courteous and deferential as a Span- 
iard should be to the priest and to his commission ; but 
he made up his mind, and, like Padre Antonio, made 
his preparations with the utmost secrecy and caution, 
and they also were complete. The following night, 
while the priest was enjoying the slumbers of a good 
conscience before a pleasant future, he was aroused by 
a heavy knocking on his door. Opening it, he saw an 
officer and a, file of grenadiers. Thinking that they 
came to assist him in his holy ofiice, " I thank you, my 
friends," he said, " and his excellency, for the prompti- 
tude of this compliance with my request ; but I have 
no need of your services at this moment. You can re- 
turn, with the blessing of God. I shall warn you in 
time when you are wanted." He was informed that 
he was arrested. " What," he exclaimed, stupefied, 
" will you dare lay hands on a commissioner of the In- 
quisition ? " " I dare obey orders," replied the officer; 
and the Padre Antonio, with the efficiency of his own 
holy office, was stowed away in a ship in port, which 
sailed the next day for Cadiz. " When I rea-l the com- 



138 NEW ORLEANS. 

munication of that Capuchin," wrote Miro to the Cabi- 
net of Madrid, " I shuddered. The very name of 
Inquisition uttered in New Orleans wouhl be suf- 
ficient not only to check immigration . . . but would 
be capable of driving away those who have recently 
come here. And I even fear that, in spite of my hav- 
ing sent Father Sedella out of the country, the most 
fatal consequences may arise from the mere suspicion 
of the cause of his dismissal." 

A half century later, when the old calaboose was 
demolished, secret dungeons containing instruments of 
torture were discovered, which were supposed to be 
some of the preparations for the disciplining of the col- 
onists, announced as complete, by Padre Antonio. 

But the serious responsibility of the Spanish govern- 
ors of Louisiana, was the attempt to mew up the com- 
merce of the Mississippi in the colonial tariff regulations 
of Spain. Honest foreign commerce, as expected, had 
been nigh driven away from the port ; what trade 
remained was in the hands of smugglers and contra- 
bands. But there was ailother trade, tlie volume and 
force of which neither the French nor the Spaniards 
had fully estimated. After the war of Indejoendence, 
the great Middle States, the great West they were 
called then, burst, as it were, into their full rich devel- 
opment. There were then no railroads ; rivers furnished 
the only outlet for the teeming harvests ; and the Mis- 
sissippi, gathering up the waters of its affluents and 
their freight, bore down upon its currents to New 
Orleans a continuous line of flatboats laden to the edge 
with the rich produce from above. " As many as forty 
boats at a time," wrote Miro, could be seen coming in 
to the landing. Tlie cargoes found ready sale, and 



NEW ORLEANS. 139 

were soon the main source of food supplies to the city; 
the flatboats, after being unloaded, Avere broken up and 
sold for timber. But the sturdy flatl)oatmen, from Ohio 
and Kentucky, on their return, had always a long list of 
seizures, confiscations, imprisonments and vexations, and 
interferences of all kinds by the Spanish authorities, to 
report. The people of the States were too strong and 
bold in their new liberty to brook such treatment. 
They claimed that the Mississippi river belonged to 
the people of the Mississippi Valley, and they deter- 
mined to have the use of it, to its mouth. The violent 
invasion of Louisiana, and capture of New Orleans, 
became a common threat with them, although the 
peaceable element among them applied to Congress for 
relief. 

Miro, impressed w^ith the importance of the jNIissis- 
sippi as the artery of trade to the country, and fully 
alive to the critical temper of the Americans, and to the 
defenceless condition of his province, did what he could 
to relieve the tension, by relaxing his restrictions upon 
the river trade. To fill up the country, he encouraged 
emigration from the west itself, into the Spanish side of 
the Mississippi Valley. The Acadian emigrants that 
came into the country were settled along the river 
bank, and, to increase the Spanish population, a number 
of families from the Canary Islands were imported and 
settled in Galvezton, near Manchac, and in Venezuela, 
on Bayou Lafourche. The descendants of these people 
are still called Islingues, Islanders. 

A brilliant effort was also made to secure the friend- 
ship of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians, still a 
formidable and always unreliable power, to the north 
and east of Louisiana. Miro invited thirty-six of the 



140 NEW ORLEANS. 

most influential of the Chickasaw chiefs, to the city, 
and exerted himself to give them a royal entertain- 
ment, receiving them with the pomp and ceremon}^ they 
so delighted in ; gave them rich presents, harangued 
them, was harangued by them, smoked the calumet 
with tliem, liad a nnlitary parade for them, decorated 
them with medals. The Chickasaw regent, however, 
Avho attended in place of the king, a minor, would not 
accept his medal. Such distinctions, he said, might 
confer honour on his warriors, but he was already 
sufficiently distinguished by his royal blood. The 
gala wound up with a grand ball, which delighted 
the dusky visitors mightily. They could not keep 
their eyes off the beautiful ladies, wondrously radiant 
in their ball dresses, and it is on record that, with tlie 
true gracefulness, if not the graceful truthfulness, of 
compliment, one of the visitors was lieard remarking 
(what, indeed, many visitors have since remarked 
at New Orleans balls) that he believed the ladies 
were all sisters, and had descended just as they were 
from heaven. 

The mutterings from the north still continued, and 
at every rise of the river, Miro feared a filibustering 
army of indignant Westerners in flatboats. Then, 
from suggestions from dissatisfied Americans, there 
crept into Spanish calculations a ray of possibility 
that the Western States might, for commercial advan- 
tages, be seduced away from the new republic, which 
seemed apparently a union only for the advantage 
of the east and north, and formed into an independent 
republic, friendly to and even dependent upon, 
Spain. And out of Miro's surmises on the subject, 
and the fosterings of them by American discontent, 



NEW ORLExiNS. 141 

there arose a bit of political intrigue which runs 
through the rest of the Spanish domination. 

Don Estevan, being permitted, at his own request, 
to retire to Spain, the province and city were, for the 
next five years, confided to the Baron Francois Louis 
Hector de Carondelet. The Baron was a native of 
Flanders, a short, plump, choleric, good-hearted middle- 
aged gentleman. At the time of his appointment 
he was serving as governor of San Salvador, in 
Guatemala. Like Miro, he found himself in Louisiana 
wrestling with the question whether, practically. New 
Orleans was to control the Mississippi for Spain, or tlie 
Mississippi to control New Orleans for America ; and 
like Miro, he wisely submitted to the violation of 
tariff regulations which no power could have enforced. 
The Western trade multiplying in volume and value, 
the Western boatmen, traders, merchants, increased 
in numbers, audacity, and independence, continued to 
pour into the city. Sometimes, in the wild boisterous- 
ness of their night frolics, their brawling and skir- 
mishing with the Spanish guard, the peaceable citizens, 
awakened out of their slumbers, would wonder if they 
were not in truth making good their threats of literally 
capturing the place. In the wake of these pioneers 
came merchants from Philadelphia, establishing branch 
houses in the new business centre, and they drew after 
them from all over the country the rank and file of 
their offices, young Americans, keen for new chances 
at quick fortunes. The first dottings of American 
names, queer and foreign they seem, appear now 
among the French and Spanish, on signboards, in 
society, in families. 

Timely warning had been sent from INIadrid, in 



142 NEW OBLEANS. 

Miro's term, prohibiting the introduction of any boxes, 
clocks, or other wares stamped with the figure of the 
American goddess of liberty. It hung together with 
the Madrid idea of establishing the Inquisition in New 
Orleans, and putting the Mississippi in leading strings. 
But the American goddess of liberty was not the only 
one to be feared; there was the much more deadly 
French goddess of liberty, or of revolution, and every 
paper or letter that came from the old country brought, 
if not her figure, the breathing of her spirit. It was 
electricity to tlie atmosphere. In vain came the 
bloody details of the Reign of Terror, the fugitives from 
France, the boat loads of terror-stricken women and 
children, in their blood-stained clothes, from St. Do- 
mingo and the other revolted West Indian islands ; 
the Phrygian cap was in, if not on, every head ; the 
" Marseillaise " and the " ^a ira " on every Creole 
tongue. The proclamation of the republic, the execu- 
tion of Louis XVI. were hailed with enthusiasm. The 
excitement reached its climax with the declaration of 
war by Spain against France. Then the Spanish 
reconstruction was shaken off, like a dream, from the 
Creoles ; they started to their feet, proclaiming them- 
selves Frenchmen, Frenchmen still in heart, language, 
and nationality. As for the republic, even the most 
monarchical among them had been republican since 
Louis XV. had cast them off and abandoned them 
to the vengeance of O'Reilly. 

They saw a chance now of reasserting their will as a 
people and being re-annexed by liberty, to those rights 
of country from which an act of despotism had cast them 
out. One hundred and fifty of them signed a petition 
praying for tlie protection of the new republic. At 



NEW ORLEANS. 143 

the theatre the orchestra Avas compelled to play the 
revolutionary songs. The French Jacobin society 
of Philadelphia distributed through secret agents 
their inflammatory address from the freemen of France 
to their brothers in Louisiana, calling upon them to 
rise for their liberty, promising that abundant help 
would pour down the Ohio and Mississippi to them, 
a promise that the machinations of the French minister 
at Washington, and the well-known dispositions of 
the Western people, rendered only too plausible. 
Auguste de la Chaise, grandson of the former royal 
commissary (nephew of the confessor of Louis XIV.), 
and one of the most influential and distinguished of 
the young Creoles, threw himself heart and soul into 
tlie movement, and was sent by the French minister 
to Kentucky to recruit the forces he was chosen to 
lead into Louisiana. 

But the baron was equal to the emergency. To off- 
set the French petition, he had another paper signed 
by an equal number of citizens who pledged themselves 
to the king of Spain and the actual government of 
Louisiana. The gates of the city were closed every 
evening at dark ; the militia was mui^tered ; the orches- 
tra at the tlieatre was forbidden to play martial or revo- 
lutionary music ; revolutionary songs were prohibited 
in the streets and coffee-houses ; and six of the most 
ardent republicans were arrested and sent to Havana, 
to cool their heads by a twelvemonth's quiet and seclu- 
sion in the security of the castle fortress there. And 
the city was fortified as it never liad been before and 
never has been since ; the baron himself going every 
morning at dawn on horseback to superintend the 
works. The maps of the time show running around 



144 



NEW ORLEANS. 



the vieux carre a tight little palisadoed wall, fifteen 
feet high, with a fosse in front seven feet deep and forty 
feet wide. On the corners, fronting the river, were 
two forts, St. Louis (Canal street) and St. Charles 
(Esplanade street), pentagon shaped, with a parapet 
coated with brick, eighteen feet high, armed with a 
dozen twelve and eighteen pounders. Before the cen- 
tre of the city was a great battery, which crossed its 



pWfflffi- i 




fire with the forts, and commanded the river. The rear 
also was protected with three forts-, Forts Burgnndy 
(Esplanade street), St. Joseph, and St. Ferdinand 
(Canal street). The batteries on the river were 
strengthened, and a fort was built on Bayou St. 
John. 

A distinguished French general, Victor Collot, who 
visited the province in 179G, studying its military 
resources, gives, in his written report of his observa- 
tions, an elaborate and rather amusing description of 
the baron's fortifications. 



NEW on LEANS. 145 

" It cannot be denied that these niiniatnre forts are well kept 
and trimmed np. But . . . they look more like playthings in- 
tended for babies than military defences. For . . . there is not 
one that five hundred determined men could not carry, sword in 
hand. Once master of one of the princijial forts, either St. Louis 
or St. Charles, the enemy would have no need of minding the 
others, because by bringing the guns to bear on the city, it would 
be forced to capitulate immediately, or be burned up in less than 
an hour. We believe that M. de Carcmdelet, when he adopted this 
means of defence, thought move of ])r()viding for the obedience of 
the subjects of his Catholic majesty, then for an attack of a for- 
eign enemy, and in this point of view he nuxy be said to have com- 
pletely succeeded." 

The baron himself confesses in his after reports to 
liis government tliat this was his point of view, and 
said, moreover, that if New Orleans had not been awed 
by his forts, its people wonld have rebelled and a revo- 
lution taken place. 

However deficient the baron may have appeared to 
tlie general as a military engineer, he was not so lacking 
in strategical shrewdness as to allow so competent a 
critic witliin his lines. He sent a file of dragoons to 
the De Bore plantation above the city, where the 
general was staying, arrested him, seized his papers 
and maps, and lodged him in Fort St. Charles, whose 
value as a prison at least he luid an o[)portunity to 
test. Later he was sent to the Balise, and deposited 
in the house of Ronquillo, the chief pilot there, situated 
in a swamp from which there was no escape except by 
boat. After six weeks' sojourn here, C'ollot succeeded 
in getting passage in a brig to Philadelphia. 

As for De Bor^ (grandfather of Charles Gayarr ', the 
historian), who was an ardent Frenchman, the baron 
thought seriously of arresting him also, and sending 



146 



NEW ORLEANS. 



him to Havana ; but lie was deterred by the thought of 
De Bore's influential family connections, and the great 
benefit he had conferred upon the colony by his suc- 
cessful experiment in sugar making. 

The United States, in the meantime, had asserted its 
authority, checked the intrigues of the French min- 










ister and prevented the use of its territory for an inva- 
sion of the Spanish possessions ; and, by the treaty of 
Madrid, 1795, Spain allowed the free navigation of the 
river to Americans, and granted them a place of de- 
posit, free of duty, in the city. 

Within the city walls, the rebuilding and improve- 
ments continued. As there had been another disastrous 



NEW ORLEANS. 147 

conflagration, the roofs, instead of being shingled, 
were terraced or covered with round tiles of home 
manufacture. The dark, ill-guarded streets, a haunt for 
footpads and robbers and evildoers, were lighted by 
eiglity hanging-lamps, and a regular force of night 
watchmen Avas formed, serenos they were called, from 
tlieir calling out the state of the weather and the hour 
of the night. ]>ut the great, the monumental, Avork of 
the baron, was the Canal Carondelet, which not only 
drained the vast swamps in the rear of the city, but, by 
bringing the waters of the Bayou St. John to a basin 
close to its ramparts, immensely facilitated and increased 
its commerce. The cabildo in acknowledgment gave 
his name to it. 

Louisiana having been detached from the Bishopric 
of Havana, and erected into a distinct see, the city 
received, in 1794, a high and worthy addition to its 
population and dignity. Her new bishop, Don Luis 
de Peiialvert y Cardenas, arrived with two canons and 
took up his residence in the convent of the Capuchins, 
and the parish church of St. Louis was advanced to 
the rank of Cathedral. 

The first newspaper of the colony, " Le Moniteur de 
la Louisianne," made its appearance also in this year. 
A Free Masons' lodge was established. 

The establishment of the French theatre, however, 
antedated all these events. In 1791, among the first 
refugees from St. Domingo came a company of French 
comedians. They hired a hall and commenced to give 
regular performances. The success they met, it may 
be said, endures still, for the French drama has main- 
tained through over a century the unbroken continuity 
of its popularity in the city. 



148 ^^^^' OB LEANS. 

The Cathedral, the Cabihh), the tlieatre, that is how 
they were ranked then — and are ranked now by the 
Creoles. The hired liall in course of time became the 
"Theatre St. Pierre," or "La Comedie," on St. Peter 
street, between Bourbon and Orleans streets, and, bar- 
ring a two months' respite, regular performances were 
given on its boards winter and summer for twenty 
years — classic drama, opera, ballet, pantomime. In 
1808 the new and progressive "• Theatre St. Philippe," 
in St. Philip street, between Royal and Boui'bon was 
opened with a grand programme : ballet, pantomime 
" Le Sourd," and " L'Ecossais a la Louisiane." And in 
its repertoire during the year, there was more local 
drama " Le Commerce de Nuit," a Creole comedy with 
songs and patois, and " L'habitant de la Guadaloupe." 
The two theatres kept up a fine company of actors and 
musicians, many of them marrying in the city and hav- 
ing representatives of their name still among us. In 
1811 the "Theati'e d'Orleans" was opened on the 
square now occupied by the Convent of the Holy Fam- 
ily. When one said the "• Theatre d'Orleans," in those 
days, and for forty years afterwards, in New Orleans, 
one expressed a theatrical excellence second only to 
Paris. If any one doubts this, there are plenty yet 
alive to tell of its glories, and have we not the great 
prima donna still with us, the beautiful and bcAvitching 
Calve? And he who can hear of her as La Norma and 
La Fille du Regiment without irrepressible longings to 
be three score and ten — has not the heart of a New 
Orleanian. 

In 1797 the Baron and Baroness de Carondelet left 
the city and province, the baron having been appointed 
president of the Audiencia Real of Quito. They were 



NEW ORLEANS. 151 

the most estimable of government representatives in all 
the relations of official and social life. They left behind 
them in the city, to remember and regret them, a large 
circle of friends, who, although now also passed into the 
remembered and regretted, have left chronicled, in many 
a cradle and fireside story, the sayings and doings of the 
good, domineering little baron and his amiable wife. 

Brigadier-general Gayoso de Lemos followed in the 
Hotel du Gouvernement. He had been educated in 
England, and there, it is seriously apprehended by 
French and Spanish historians, acquired tliose habits of 
conviviality which carried him off suddenly, at the age of 
forty-eight, — to be definite, after an over-generous sup- 
per with a distinguished American friend and visitor. 

Still the Americans and the Western commerce came 
down the Mississippi, and still from the Gulf side 
ilowed in the immigration from the West Indies and 
from France. There could be no criticism now of the 
birth or blood of the immigrants. The class which had 
scoured the cities and kidnapped the villagers of France 
for human stock for their concessions in Louisiana, were 
now themselves driven into the New World by their 
own game, now turned into hunters. The Marcj[uis de 
Maison Rouge, the Baron de Bastrop, M. de Lassus de 
St. Vrain came, the avant coureurs of what would have 
heen, had their ideas realized, a whole provincial nobil- 
ity for Louisiana. And, with the unexpected pictu- 
resqueness of circumstance or accident that sometimes 
groups dancers at a masked ball, there came across to 
New Orleans in 1798 the royal fugitives themselves, the 
Due d'Orleans, the Due de Montpensier, and the Comte 
de Beaujolais, tlie sons of Philippe Egalite. They were 
cordially welcomed by the Spanish authorities, and hos- 



152 iV^^TF OBLEANS. 

pitably received by the citizens, among whom they fonnd 
faces and names that had once, like Louisiana, belonged 
by every right to France. They were the guests of 
that Creole and provincial magnate, Philippe de Ma- 
rigny (who had once been a page at Versailles), at his 
plantation, then below the city, now just below Espla- 
nade street. Costly entertainments were given them ; 
they became familiar figures in the streets, and fre- 
quented the houses of the prominent citizens. They 
visited the plantation of Julien Poydras and of M. de 
Bore, who had been, in his youth, a mousquetaire noir 
in the court of their grandfather, — everywhere pro- 
fessing themselves charmed with the city, pleased with 
the Creole men, and as enchanted with the ladies as the 
Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs had been. In fact, 
the young royal brothers left an impression of pleasure 
behind them in the city, not only ineffaceable but inex- 
haustible; reminiscences of the most miraculous origin 
spring up everywhere to commemorate the glory and 
honour of the visit. Houses built half a century after- 
wards, and in regions they never visited, show rooms 
which they occupied. There are enough beds in which 
they slept to fill a whole year of nights ; and vases, 
tea-cups, and snuff-boxes for a population. 

Philippe de Marigny, it is said, placed not only his 
house, but his purse, at the disposition of his guests, and 
their needs forced upon them a temporary use of the 
latter as well as of the former. In time the Due d' Or- 
leans became Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king of 
France. Philippe de Marigny died, and his son, Ber- 
nard, the historical spendtlirift of Louisiana, fell into 
evil days, having pleasured away the large fortune left 
him by his father. He bethought him of his father's 



NEW OBLEANS. 153 

royal friend and guest, and went to France, hoping for a 
return, not only of the hospitality, but of the purse of his 
father. But, bourgeois though he was in other respects, 
Louis Philippe had a royal memory. He returned the 
hospitality, however, and offered young Mandeville, the 
son of Bernard, an education at St. Cyr and a position 
in the French army. The young Creole became lieu- 
tenant in a cavalry corps d'elite, but found that an obli- 
gation had been shifted, rather than a debt paid ; and 
at any rate, as he used to relate in his old age, he was 
too much of an American and a republican for life in 
France. He fought a duel with a brother otlicer who 
cast a slur upon the Americans, resigned his commis- 
sion, and returned to the colony. 

Upon the news of Gayoso's death, the captain -general 
of Cuba sent over the Marquis de Casa Calvo to be 
governor ad iiiterim of the colony. Sebastian de Casa 
Calvo de la Puerta y O'Faril, Marquis de Casa Calvo, was 
a connection of O'Reilly's, under whom he had served 
as cadet in Louisiana thirty years before, when he had 
witnessed the execution of the five patriots. Curiously 
enough, Napoleon was just now consummating his re- 
taliatory supplement to that affair, and, by the treaty 
of Ildefonso, putting France again in possession of 
Louisiana. But, as before, the cession was a secret. 

Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo, brigadier-general in 
the armies of Spain, arrived in 1801, to relieve the 
Marquis de Casa Calvo. Salcedo made a vigorous 
defensive effort against what he considered the designs 
of the Americans. Their immigration into the prov- 
ince was practically prohibited by a decree forbidding 
the granting of any land in Louisiana to a citizen of the 
United States ; and, in order to put an end to the 



154 



NEW on LEANS. 



influx of Americans into New Orleans, the right of 
deposit was suspended by proclamation, and no other 
place, as j)rovided in the treaty of Madrid, was desig- 
nated. The Western people saw themselves deprived 
of an outlet without which they could not exist. They 
arose in their resentment, and addressed, not only 
Congress, but the whole country : — 

"The Mississippi is ours," they said, "by the law of nature. 
Our rivers swell its volume and How with it to the (kilf of JNlexico. 
Its mouth is the only issue wliich nature has given to our waters, 
and we wish to use it for our vessels. No X'ower in the world 
should deprive us of our rights. If our liberty in this matter is 
disputed, nothing shall prevent our taking possession of the capi- 
tal, and when we are once masters of it we shall know how to 
maintain ourselves there. If Congress refuses us effectual protec- 
tion, we will adopt the measures which our safety requires, even 
if they endanger the peace of the Union and our connection with 
the other States. No protection, no allegiance." 



~ % 







►^^ 






^^^S'v'gSfil 




MB:^^^ 



CHAPTER IX. 



"1" OUISIANA is the only place on the continent, 
■^-^ the possessor of which is the natural enemy of 
the United States." 

The interesting and highly creditible display of 
American diplomacy by which President Jefferson 
forced Napoleon Bonaparte to accept this conviction 
of his as an ultimatum, and sell him for fifteen millions 
of dollars, not only New Orleans, but one million square 
miles in the heart of the Continent, must be passed 
over. The treaty of sale was signed in Paris on the 
thirtieth of April, 1803. 

Bernadotte was selected to take command of the 
colony by Napoleon, who thought thus to rid himself 
cleverly and profitably of a suspected rival. Berna- 
dotte, however, had not only a Bonaparte training, but 
a certain amount of Bonaparte slirewdness himself. 
His exaction of men and money for his command were 
such that, as Napoleon said, lie would not do as much 
for one of his own brothers. He therefore substituted 
General Victor, with a prefect, Laussat, and changed 
the form of Bernadotte's exile by appointing him min- 
ister plenipotentiary to the United States. Bernadotte 

155 



156 NEW OB LEANS. 

accepted tliis, but before lie could complete his prejDara' 
tions for sailing war was declared between France and 
England, and lie returned to Paris, declaring that he 
would perforin no civil function so long as it lasted ; 
and it was some time before the First Consul would be 
reconciled to him. General Victor, preparing also to 
sail for New Orleans, did not take his departure for the 
same reason. Laussat therefore sailed without him, but 
as General Victor alone was authorized to receive the 
colony from the Spanish government, the colonial jire- 
fect, upon arrival, found himself without authority and 
without functions. 

The news of its reannexation to France was welcomed 
by the city with the wildest excitement and rejoicings. 
Laussat was received with an entliusiastic ovation, and 
his proclamation in the name of the French Republic, to 
quote the words of the address returned by the citizens, 
"" hlled their souls with the delirium of extreme felicity. 
. . . But," continued the address, in answer to 
Laussat's republican denunciation of the Spanish gov- 
ernment, " we should be unworthy of what is to us a 
subject of so much pride ... if we did not acknowledge 
that we have no cause of complaint against the Spanish 
government. We have never groaned under the yoke 
of an oppressive despotism. It is true that the time 
was when our unfortunate kinsmen reddened with their 
blood the soil which they wished to preserve for France. 
. . . But the calamities which were inflicted upon us 
were due to the atrocious soul of a foreigner and to an 
extreme breach of faith. . . . Long ago we proved to 
the Spaniards that we did not consider them as the ac- 
complices of these atrocities. We have become bound 
together by family connections and by the bonds of 



NEW ORLEANS. 157 

friendship. Let them have the untrammelled enjoy- 
ment of all the property they may own on the soil that 
has become the land of freedom, and let us share with 
them, like brothers, the blessings of our new position." 

Five weeks after Laussat's arrival, the Marquis de 
Casa Calvo landed in the city, sent by the captain-gen- 
eral of Cuba, to act with Governor Salcedo in turning 
over the colony to France. During his administration 
the marquis had borne the reputation of a man of 
haughty disposition and violent temper, but with man- 
ners so courtly and elegant as to gain the heritage of 
many of those anecdotes which form the stock illustra- 
tions of good manners from time immemorial ; exetnjjli 
gratia^ that well-remembered one, which George Wash- 
ington shares with him, representing him as returning 
the bow of a negro with a " Shall I be outdone in 
politeness by a negro ? " 

It was not such a man who would permit the outgoing 
monarchy to be put to shame by the incoming re- 
public. Attended by a staff and a pompous guard, he 
gathered around him the most brilliant representatives 
of Spanish blood in society, with all of their connec- 
tions and affiliations, and, by a lavish expenditure of 
money, he turned his official mission into a triumphant 
apotheosis of his government in Louisiana. It could 
not but discompose the French prefect, who, however, 
with his wife, maintained with equal brilliancy the 
credit of his government. Entertainment followed 
entertainment: balls, concerts, dinners, and the theatre 
in full blast. It was a dazzling rivalry and a campaign 
of sociabilities such as no city could better enjoy, and 
one which, in the gay memory of the irrevocable, has 
never been obliterated. 



158 NEW ORLEANS. 

But there was one element of the community that 
could not even in sympathy participate in the general 
gratification. With the sacrilegious, bloody, French 
Revolution fresh in their minds, the Ursuline nuns could 
only feel terror at passing under the government of the 
republic. It had closed the religious houses in France, 
why should it not do the same in French colonies ? 
The mother superior therefore petitioned his Catholic 
Majesty to permit her and her community to retire 
with his power, and establish themselves elsewhere in 
his dominions. Their request was granted, and they 
decided to return to Havana. In vain Laussat exerted 
himself to the utmost to calm their apprehensions 
and persuade them to trust the new government. One 
of the elder women, breaking through conventual re- 
straint and habitual timidity, poured forth upon him 
a fierce denunciation of the power he represented. In 
vain the deputations of citizens added their supplica- 
tions, the mayor going upon his knees to the mother 
superior, beseeching her not to abandon the city and 
the city's children. Only nine out of the twenty-five 
could be induced to remain under the Tricolor. The 
annals of the convent tell how, on Whit Sunday, 1803, 
when the evening gun from Fort St. Charles had fired 
its signal, the sixteen nuns, shrouded in their veils and 
mantles, walked in procession out of their chapel, fol- 
lowed by the little band of sisters who had decided to 
remain. The convent garden was thronged with their 
old scholars who pressed around them for a farewell 
embrace. At the gate were grouped their slaves, who 
threw themselves on their knees before them. The 
nuns paused on the threshold, weeping, irresolute ; then, 
throwing themselves into the arms of those whom they 



NEW ORLEANS. 159 

were to leave forever, tliey tore themselves away and 
passed into the street. Slaves bearing lanterns walked 
before them. The vicar-general, Governor Salcedo, the 
Marquis de Casa Calvo, and a long cortege of citizens, 
followed them to their vessels and saw them embark. 

Everything was in readiness for the ceremony of the 
transfer, and the arrival of General Victor was hourly 
expected, and every one, according to a local chronicle, 
had his tricoloured cockade ready to be stuck in his 
hat as soon as the Spanisli flag was lowered and the 
French raised, when a vessel from Bordeaux brought 
the account of the sale of the province by Napoleon to 
the United States. Such a report had drifted into the 
city, but Laussat, perfectly ignorant of the negotiations 
on the subject, and wholly given over to his plans and 
projects for a glorious French republican administration 
of Louisiana, treated it as calumnious, until he read his 
appointment by Napoleon as commissioner to receive 
the colony from Spain and hand it over to the United 
States autliorities. 

The lirst ceremony, an elaborate but uninteresting 
formality, took place on Wednesday, November 30, 
1803. On the same day the Spanish municipal govern- 
ment was abolished, and a French one substituted. In 
the city a mayor was appointed, M. Etienne de Bord. 
and a municipal council of ten, composed of the most 
distinguished among the colonists and all prominent in 
their devotion to France. Among them was Villere, the 
son of the companion of Lafreniere. The Spanish com- 
mander of the militia was replaced by a Creole. 

Seventeen days later the American commissioners, 
with their escort of troops, arrived and camped two 
miles outside the city walls. Three days afterwards, 



160 



NEW ORLEANS. 



on December 20th, was consummated what the Loui- 
sianians must most devoutly have hoped woukl be their 
last change of government. It was the third in the 
memory of a living generation. The ceremony could 
not be otherwise than funereal to the natives. 

At sunrise the gay folds of the Tricolor spread in the 
breeze, from the top of the flagstaff. It was noted as 
a good omen that, instead of the rain and clouds that 
had attended both Spanish ceremonies, tlie day dawned 




clear and bright. A faultless sky shone overhead. At 
nine o'clock the militia mustered and marched into the 
Place d'Armes, and the crowd began to mass in the 
streets. A cannon shot signalled that the American 
troops had left their cam})s and were marching towards 
the city. A salute of twenty guns from Fort St. Charles 
announced that they were passing through the Tchou- 
pitoulas gate, and being admitted into the streets of 
the city. At noon the column made its appearance in 



NEW ORLEANS. 161 

the Place d' Amies. General Wilkinson and Governor 
Claiborne, the American commissioners, on horseback 
at the head, were followed by a detachment of dragoons 
in red uniform, four pieces of artillery, cannoneers, two 
companies of infantry, and one of carabineers. The 
troops formed in the square opposite the French and 
local soldiery. The commissioners, dismounting, pro- 
ceeded to the Hotel de Ville, as the Cabildo was now 
called, where they were received by the officers of the 
municipality, the French commissioner and his suite, 
and a large and notable assembly of citizens. Laussat, 
leading the way to the great hall, took his place on an 
elevated chair of honour. Governor Claiborne and Gen- 
eral Wilkinson seating themselves on his right and left. 
The legal formalities of three weeks before were re- 
peated. Laussat delivered the keys of the city to Clai- 
borne, changed places with him, and publicly absolved 
from their oath of allegiance to France, all colonists 
who wished to pass under the new domination. The 
couunissioners then arose and walked out upon the bal- 
cony. What met their eyes was not the small, pretty, 
fenced garden of to-day, shut in by the sordid ugliness 
of railroad buildings in front, and hedged on each side 
by serried walls of brick. Then the waters of the Mis- 
sissippi rolled in untrammelled vic^v of the cross of the 
Cathedral, rippling its currents around the long line of 
decorated ships lying at the broad, tree-shaded levee. 
Tlie open space, then a parade ground for an army, 
double its present size, to the right and to the left, hold- 
ing off the advance of streets and houses by noble ave- 
nues of trees. In the centre arose the great flagstaff, 
bearing that flimsiest of fabrics and strongest of sym- 
bols that has ever held the hearts of mortals to a coign 



162 



NEW ORLEANS. 



of earth. About the staff were grouped the military, a 
vivid spot of steel and colour, and around them, and as 
far as eye could see, human faces, eagerly looking up in 
the bright December sun, a motley of colour, and expres- 
sion, white, black, yellow, red, Frenchman, Spaniard, 
African, mulatto, Indian, and, most visible of all by his 







height and boisterous triumph on the occasion, the tall, 
lanky Westerner, in coon-skin cap and leathern hunting 
shirt. 

At the appearance of the commissioners, the Tricolor 
began to flutter gently down, and the great new flag, 
the Stars and Stripes, to mount the staff". When they 
came together midway they paused a moment. A can- 



NEW OnLEANS. 163 

non shot fired, and every gun in the city, from fort, 
battery and sliip, answered in salute ; the bands played, 
the Americans shouted. The rest of the crowd looked 
on, silent. When the reverberation had died away, the 
Stars and Stripes were waving from the top of the 
staff. After an inaugural address by the American 
governor to the " Louisianians, my fellow citizens," 
there was a review of the troops and the American 
companies defiled out of one side of the square, the 
French out of the other. 

When, twenty-one days before, the French flag was 
flung to the breeze, for its last brief reign in Louisiana, 
a band of fifty old soldiers formed themselves into a 
guard of lionour, which was to act as a kind of death 
watch to their national colours. They stood now at the 
foot of the staff and received in their arms the Tricolor 
as it descended, and while the Americans were rending 
the air with their shouts, they marched silently away, 
their sergeant bearing it at their head. All uncovered 
before it ; the American troops, as they passed, pre- 
sented arms to it. It was carried to the government 
house, and left in the hands of Laussat. 

Governor Claiborne was appointed to preside over 
the territory of Orleans until Congress should legislate 
the proper government for it. While awaiting this, and 
subsequent action of Congress, admitting them into their 
full rights of citizens of the United States, the Louisian- 
ians and Governor Claiborne both passed through expe- 
riences, than which none can be conceived more trying 
to human, and, we may add, national nature. 

The American reconstruction went harder with the 
Creoles than the Spanish had done. A thousand 
common traits congenialized the French and Spanish 



164 



NE]V on LEANS. 



character. Intercourse Avitli tlie Americans, barba-" 
rians they were called, revealed only antagonisms. 
The Louisianians not only felt the hnmiliation of 
being sold by their mother country, but of being 







bought by the Americans ; and every American who 
w^alked the streets of New Orleans, did it with the 
air of a personal purchaser of the province, an arro- 
gance unbearable to the Creoles, who resented it with 



NEW OB LEANS. 165 

an arrogance still more galling to the Americans. 
They refused to take office under the new government, 
and held obstinately to the autonomy guaranteed them 
in the act of cession. Making English the official lan- 
guage of the government naturally made French the 
only language in use outside of it. There was no 
attempt on the part of the natives to master the foreign 
idiom, which, through popular affectation, was ignored, 
or was used, when it could not possibly be avoided, 
strictly for business purposes. The governor, who 
did not understand or speak either Spanish or French, 
surrounded himself, naturally, with men with whom 
he could communicate, the new-comers ; and the 
discontent increased as the native population saw 
the inevitable rising importance to these last. The 
delay in admitting the territory into the Union, 
the debates in Congress over the qualifications of 
the Louisianians for self-government, were a personal 
irritation and provocation to every Creole. A Creole 
and an American could not meet without a dispute 
and an affray. The animosity involved all ; the 
governor himself and the United States general 
actively participated in it. At night, insurrectionary 
placards posted on the corners of the streets attracted 
crowds around them, reading them aloud, copying 
them, preventing their being torn away. Every day 
produced its crop of duels ; the governor's private secre- 
tary and brother-in-law, attempting to refute a slander, 
was killed in one. The old militia was disorganized, and 
there was too much jealousy and distrust, too distinct a 
line drawn between the two populations, to hope for 
any new, common, efficient force. 

The panicky sensationalism crept into the very walls 



166 NEW ORLEANS. 

of the convent, and the nine faithful sisters who were 
willing to confide themselves to the godless French 
republic found their courage fail them before the 
American. France, at least, had once been a child of 
the church, but the United States had been founded, 
so to speak, on its religious orphanage ; and it was 
openly asserted that the property of the Ursulines 
was to be confiscated and they themselves expelled 
by the Protestant government. All that their most 
sympathetic friends ventured to hope for them was 
that, forbidden to receive novices, they might remain 
undisturbed in their convent until death naturall}^ 
extinguished the community, and thus the property 
would revert to the nation. Despite the assurances 
of Governor Claiborne, the mother superior wrote 
to President Jefferson himself, and was only tran- 
quilized by the handsome letter of reassurance, written 
with his own hand, which is one of tlie treasures of the 
Convent archives. 

Even the negroes, free and slave, had their prejudices 
and superstitions to foster dislike against the "Meri- 
cain Coquin," as they called the American negro. In 
short, the Americans were contemned, despised, and 
ridiculed, and their advent in the city was the current 
reason even for any deviation, or degeneration, as it was 
considered, from the usual course of nature. It is re- 
lated that at a public ball, which had been interrupted 
by an earthquake shock, an old heau was heard mutter- 
ing to himself : " Ce n'etait pas <lu temps des Espa- 
gnols et des Fran^ais, que le plaisir des dames etait 
ainsi trouble." 

The Spanish officers and officials professing them- 
selves too much attached to the people did not withdraw 



NEW OBLEANS. 167 

from the city. Casa Calvo, with his Spanish guard, 
distinguished address and winning manners, still lin- 
gered, a social lion, meeting with an effusive admiration, 
and gaining a popularity at the expense of the rough 
Americans, which made him particularly obnoxious to 
them. He and his companions now had the opportu- 
nity, which they seized with gusto, of returning a 
cherished compliment, and, by their intrigues and their 
intimations of Spanish invasion, kept Claiborne in as 
constant a state of anxiety as ever Spanish governor 
had been kept by Americans. And just at the moment 
when internal commotion and Spanish suspicion were 
at their height, who should arrive in the city but that 
man of the iron mask in American politics, Aaron Burr, 
in an elegant barge fitted out by the United States 
military commandant of the district, with sails, col- 
ours, ten oars, and an escort _pf soldiers ; Aaron Burr, 
glittering in all the reptilian fame of his duel with 
Hamilton and supposed traitorous designs against his 
government ! 

The first American governor of Louisiana, it nuist be 
confessed, had not a holiday task before him, and he 
felt it. But, while his spirits yielded to panics every 
now and then, when he thought of the Spaniards out- 
side and Spaniards and French inside his ship, and while 
he multiplied military precautions with the enterprise 
of a Carondelet, his letters, official and private, grave, 
eloquent, conscientious, and diffuse, breathe a deter- 
mination to succeed and the personal sense of patriotic 
responsibility and Christian obligation that belong to 
an alumnus of the school of Washington. 

A French traveller, M. Robin, who was in the city at 
the time of its transmission to the United States, has 



168 ^EW on LEANS. 

kindly left a description of it. Journeying leisurely by 
that pretty route through the Lakes, and up the Bayou 
St. John, he notes on the banks of the Bayou villas in 
the Italian style, with pillars supporting the galleries, 
surrounded with gardens and approached through mag- 
nificent avenues of wild orange trees. 

It was the rainy season when he arrived, and the 
streets were as impassable as they are now, a century 
later. In many quarters they were overflowed, and, 
he says, held abysses, in which carriages went to 
pieces. The sidewalks, or bmiquettes^ as they are still 
called, were great planks, usually gunwales from the 
broken flatboats, fastened flat in the mud. Only an 
expert could walk upon them without damage to boots 
and clothing. The ditches intended for draining were 
often sul)jects of consternation, as tliey overflowed into 
lakes, and foot passengers had to make long detours to 
get around them. Names, of course, were not inscribed 
anywhere on the streets, so they went by an alias, 
usually given by the largest house on it. Tlie houses 
were generally handsome, built of brick and some of 
them several stories high ; those along the river front 
were the most desirable. As the city was filling every 
day with emigrants from France and fugitives from 
St. Domingo, lodgings were very dear. The popula- 
tion consisted of French, Spaniards, Anglo-Americans, 
Bohemians, negroes, mulattoes. The money-makers 
of the place were the wholesale merchants ; the retail- 
ers, cabareteers, and pedlers were for the most part 
Catalans. The tailors, dressmakers, and bakers were 
French ; car})entering was almost a monopoly of the 
coloured. " Winter is the gay season, balls are fre- 
quent. Indeed, in a place so bare of the means of 



NEW ORLEANS. 169 

education, and where the privileges of religion are so 
curtailed, there is an abundance of amusement. . . . 
But in no country of the world is there practised such 
religious toleration." Our traveller found the elegance 
of France displayed in the entertainments, and the 
import of luxuries out of keeping with so small and so 
new a place : Malaga, Bordeaux, Madeira, olive oil (a 
most important article of consumption), brandied fruits, 
liqueurs, vinegars, sausages, anchovies, almonds, rai- 
sins, prunes, cheese, vermicelli. 

" Women, dressed in calico and muslins, and never 
wearing those that are faded and used, often changing 
colours and patterns, have the art of appearing only 
in fresh dresses. But it must be remembered that the 
Louisiana women are French women. In general they 
are tall and dignified, and the whiteness of their skin 
is set off by their dress. Silks are worn only for balls 
and grand occasions. Headgear is not much used, the 
women having the good habit of going bareheaded 
in summer, and wearing in the winter only Madras 
kerchiefs. 

"The men show themselves more enslaved to fashion 
than the women, going about in the heavy clothing 
of Europe, heads sunk in high collars, arms and hands 
lost in long sleeves, chins buried in triple cravats, 
legs encased in high boots, with great flaps. Play, 
or gaming, is the recreation of the men. In the 
evening, when the business of the day is over, fort- 
unes are lost over and over again by it. All indulge 
in it. The ship captain, even the most esteemed one, 
games away the profits of his last voyage, sometimes 
pledging the cargo committed to his care. The pedler 
games away all that he has crossed the seas to earn. 



170 



NEW OU LEANS. 



The trapper or voyageur games away the fruit of his 
long marches and perilous adventures. The planter 
coming to the city to purchase supplies for the year 
from the sale of his crop, games away his entire account. 



prf'fc 




IDLaJlb5lntKe.U 



and returns to his plantation without provisions or 
clothing. 

" The women are different ; with all their beauty 
they are without coquetry, and are devoted to their 



NEW OB LEANS. 171 

children and their hnsbands, who^ par parenfhese, easily 
tire of the monotony of their society, and seek amuse- 
ment elsewhere." 

The recreation of the Creole ladies was dancingf, and 
throughout the season they met regularly at the public 
balls, which in reality were not public, as only the one 
circle of the best society was admitted, and the guests 
were all friends and intimate. The refreshments con- 
sisted of orange flower syrup and water and eau sucre. 
Carriages were never used, presumably on account of 
the danger from the streets ; ladies walked to the balls, 
preceded by slaves bearing lanterns, and followed by 
maids carrying their satin slippers. When the weather 
was too bad for the ball to take place, its postponement 
was announced by a crier through the streets, to the 
sound of a drum. It was always understood that the 
postponement was until the next fine evening. 

Looking back upon it, across nearly a century's prog- 
ress and sophistication, the heau-monde then appears a 
social Arcad3\ The refugees from France, St. Domingo, 
and the other French West Indian Islands, landed in 
the city generally without a cent, but with all the 
beauties, cliarms, education, and customs, of genera- 
tions of culture. The men became overseers, managers 
of plantations, clerks, teachers, musicians, actors, any- 
thing to make the first bare necessities of life. The 
women did sewing, eml)roidery, dress-making, millinery, 
living or lodging, not in the new brick houses, but in the 
little two-room cottages opposite or alongside. But, as a 
biographer of the time explains, thankful for the escapes 
they had had from unmentionable horrors, all were con- 
tented, satisfied, happy, and more charming men and 
women than ever. The evening come, the St. Domingo 



172 ^EW ORLEANS. 

belle laid aside her day's task of sewing, donned her 
simple gown of muslin, and accompanied by a chaperon 
and slave, went to the ball, where, in the dance she met 
and made the most delightful society. Ah ! the refu- 
gees from St. Domingo ! Families are still pointed out 
in the city as refugees from St. Domingo, and there are 
still old negroes, here and there, who can relate how 
they were clinging to the breast when their mothers 
escaped with masters and mistresses from St. Domingo. 

It is still a current opinion in the city, that it was 
the refugees from the West Indies that brought the 
love of luxury into the colony, the Creoles before that 
time, many believing and maintaining, being simple in 
their tastes and plain in their living. It would seem, 
from the constant mention made of it in family legends, 
that the tropical ease and languor of the West Indian 
women were indeed as much a novelty then in the femi- 
nine world as the always emphasized distinction, the 
literary tastes and accomplishments of the West Indian 
men were in the masculine world. 

What tales of their escapes the St. Domingo ladies 
had to tell, and how entrancingly they told and acted 
them, hovering always so exquisitely over the vanish- 
ing point between romance and reality as to confound 
the two inseparably for generations of auditors. 
Always, as point de depart.^ the wondrous marble-ter- 
raced plantation home, with its palm -groves overlook- 
ing the sea. Then the alarm, the flight, the cries of 
the blood-infuriated blacks in pursuit, the deathly still 
hiding-place in the jungle ; and always, in everj^ tale, 
the white sails of an English vessel out in the Gulf, 
watching for signals for rescue, the approaching relief 
boat, the rush to embark, the discovery, the volley of 



NEW OBLEANS. 



17a 



musketry, and a grandmother spattering with her hrains 
the chikl in her arms, — or a chikl shot away from a 




ff 



''^'^, 



pd^mmy 



">"» 



mother's breast, or a faithful shxve expiring with her 
arms chxsped about her mistress's knees, or — every 
combination of heart-breaking horrors. There were 



174 NEW ORLEANS. 

always in each family, God be thanked, faithful slaves. 
And then, the adventures on the crowded schooner, beat- 
ing, through gale and calm, across the Gulf, famishing 
for water, decimated by fevers, pursued by pirates ! It 
was something of an education in itself to hear all that 
over and over again in one's youth, ... to know the nar- 
rator, to play with the blood-sprinkled babes, to be petted 
and scolded by the faithful D^de, Sophie, or Feliciane. 

The city was incorporated in 1806, and the voters had 
the privilege of exercising their first right of suffrage in 
the election of aldermen ; but tlie privilege, as an Ameri- 
canism, was received with apathy, and a complete indif- 
ference was manifested as to the result of the election. 

The reconstruction now was to come in contact with 
the church, and produce one of the old-time religious 
excitements in the city. Louisiana had passed under 
the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishop of JNIaryland, 
whose vicar-general, an Irish-American, ventured in 
the first flush of his authority to suspend the parish 
priest. This priest was none other than the Padre 
Antonio de Sedella, who, with his Inquisition, had been 
so summarily put out of the city by Governor Miro. 
The padre liad returned, and by his unreinforced zeal 
and devotion had gained an authority over his parish- 
ioners as al)solute as could liave been conferred upon 
him by the powers of the Holy Office. The sacraments, 
and even the church itself, grew, in the eyes of the 
faithful, into a monopoly of which Pere Antoine was 
the possessor ; and they themselves became, not the 
Church's, but his, faithful. When, one Sunday morn- 
ing, he did not appear as usual in the pvdpit, fear seized 
the assembled congregation that he might be ill. The 
church was innnediately deserted, all rushing in a mob 



NEW ORLEANS. 



175 



to the little cabin in St. Anthony's alley, in which Pere 
Antoine lived. He tranquilized them as to his bodily 




(^tl^ec(re.v4uey 



welfare, but informed them that he had been suspended. 
Suspended ! The vicar-general suspend Pere Antoine! 
This was a piece of American arrogance beyond even 



176 iVViJir ORLEANS. 

the usual extravagant display of it. Indignation sped 
from word to deed, and the Americans were given a 
dose of their own specific. Pere Antoine was elected 
parish priest by popular vote, with all the hurrahs of 
a political expression ; and he stood by the results 
of the count. The vicar-general, reduced to second 
rank in the diocese, appealed to law to enforce his 
authority. The quarrel grew apace. The lordly Casa 
Calvo, with his retinue of Sj)anish officers, became 
partisans of their candidate as against American author- 
ity. This moved the vicar-general to invoke the aid 
of the chief executive, against " the ambition of a re- 
fractory monk, supported in his apostasy by the fanati- 
cism of a misguided populace, and by the countenance 
of an individual (Casa Calvo) whose interference was to 
be attributed less to zeal for religion, than to the indul- 
gence of private passions and the promotion of views 
equally dangerous to religion and civil order," and he 
informed Claiborne that two emissaries had gone to 
Havana to secure a reinforcement of monks to sustain 
Pere Antoine in his schismatic and rebellious conduct. 
The governor judiciously declined to interfere in the 
religious part of the squabble, but the political hint 
struck home. During his next fit of apprehension 
from a Spanish invasion, he summoned Pere Antoine 
before him, and, in spite of his protestations of loyalty, 
made him take the oath of allegiance to the United 
States, in the presence of Avitnesses. To his religious 
executive, however, Pere Antoine remained non-com- 
pliant and independent, and was a terror ever to 
succeeding bishops. His little cabin cell, on the corner 
of St. Anthony's alley and Bourl)on street, with its bare 
floor and pallet lying on a couple of planks, and rough 



NEW OELEANS. 177 

table, crucifix, and chair, was the rock of spiritual 
authority in the city. Ladies thronged it during the 
hours of audience. Betrothals, marriages, ill-favoured 
daughters and ill-moraled sons, contumacious slaves 
and light husbands, baptisms, funerals, and first com- 
munions, litigations about property, and dissensions 
about gossip ; all the res disjectae of family affairs, were 
brought there to him by white and black, and by coun- 
sel he held and directed all as with consciousness of the 
infallibility attributed to him. At sight of his vener- 
able appearance in the streets, with coarse brown cas- 
sock, rosary, sandaled feet, broad-brimmed hat, Avhite 
beard, eyes cast down, — all uncovered. He died in 
1829. His funeral procession included the whole city, 
and was a grand and momentous parade, the Free 
Masons attending by a special order of the Grand Lodge 
of the state. He was the last survivor of the old Capu- 
chin mission in Louisiana, and he is still regarded as 
a saint by the secular world ; but the clerical still re- 
members a story about an early love and a duel, and his 
defiance and insubordination, and the suspicion that lie 
was not onlj^ a Free Mason, but one in high standing. 

The old Spanish enforced respect for the church 
was sorely missed, not alone by the vicar-general. The 
lady abbess of the Ursulines, as the governor called 
her, was driven by the rising spirit of levity, if not of 
godlessness, to solicit the interference of the civil au- 
thorities to prevent the repeating of a performance at 
the theatre, in which her community was held up as an 
object of derision, the last act being marked, she said, 
with peculiar indecency and disrespect. Tradition says 
that tlie play was that one, still a favourite in the city, 
il"Les Mousquetaires au Convent." The governor 



178 NEW ORLEANS. 

called upon the mayor to check the license of the stage, 
but the i^lay was repeated the following year, and 
called forth another complaint from the mother superior 
and another appeal from the governor to the mayor. 

One cannot but feel that it was a heroic triumph for 
Governor Claiborne, under the circumstances, to have 
secured a Fourth of July celebration in 1806. It was 
most grandiosely observed. All the stores and places 
of business were closed, salutes were fired from the 
forts ; there was high mass, at the Cathedral, attended 
by all the civil and military functionaries, in the fore- 
noon ; a parade of the militia ; in the afternoon, a Te 
Deum ; at night a new and original tragedy, "Wash- 
ington, or the Liberty of the New World," performed 
to an enthusiastic audience, and, ending it all, a grand 
ball. 

It was a timely inspiration of patriotism, for during 
the following autumn the Spaniards and Aaron Burr 
gave the United States their last flurry of a scare. The 
cry was that Burr was coming down the river to capt- 
ure New Orleans, and make it the capital of that sep- 
aration from the Union for which he, according to j)ub- 
lic clamour, had been long conspiring. The city was 
thrown into one of its wild excitements. Old defences 
were hurriedly patched up, naval and land forces mus- 
tered, an embargo was laid upon shipping, and the 
habeas corpus practically suspended. The crisis proved 
not only harmless, but beneficial. Out of the tornado 
of suspicion and distrust that swept over the country, 
the Creoles of Louisiana came unscathed. Not they, 
but the Americans, were accused of traitorous designs, 
and their promptitude in tendering their service to the 
country called forth a special tribute from the President 



NEW ORLEANS. 179 

in his annual message. In 1812, its probation being 
finally ended, the Territory of Orleans was admitted 
into the Union, as the State of Louisiana. Claiborne 
received the handsome compliment of being elected 
governor. 

The population of the city had now advanced to 
twenty-four thousand ; but, increased as it had been by 
iunnigration from the French possessions, it was more 
pre})onderatingly foreign to America than ever. The 
English language filtered so slowly into use, that the 
necessary concessions to the French amounted practi- 
cally to the recognition of two official tongues. This 
was most apparent in the administration of justice. The 
code itself was a transcription from the Napoleon Code, 
but on its adoption by the legislature, the former laws 
were only partially repealed ; it was found in practice 
that the Fuero viejo, Fuero juezgo, Partidas, Recapila- 
ciones, Leyes de las Indias, Autos accordados and Royal 
schedules, remained parts of the written law of the 
State. To explain them, Spanish commentators and the 
corpus juris civilis were consulted, and (particularly by 
the French lawyers) Pothier, d'Aguesseau, Dumoulin, 
and others. Every court had to be furnished with inter- 
preters of French, Spanish, and English. The jury was 
generally divided as equally as possible between those 
who understood English and those who understood 
French, and to maintain this national equality was the 
great feat of lawyers, as it was commonly accepted 
as the only sure guarantee of justice. The case was 
usually opened in English, during which the French 
part of the jury was excused, to be summoned when 
their language appeared in the argument, and the Eng- 
lish-speaking ones were granted a recess. All went 



180 iN^^JF OBLEANS. 

together in the jury room, each man contending that the 
argument he had listened to was the conclusive one, each 
disputing about it in his own vernacular, and finally 
compromising upon some Volapiik of a verdict, which, 
however arrived at, does not seem to have been any more 
unsatisfactory to justice than the verdicts reached to- 
day by a common comprehension of the argument. 

One of the first steps in the American reconstruction 
was the establishment, the incorporation rather, by the 
Legislature, of an educational institution, the college of 
Orleans. The church of St. Augustin, at tlie corner 
of Hospital and St. Claude streets, stands where, in 
an open stretch of land in the rear of the city, once 
arose the famous college of Orleans. Famous, of course, 
locally ; but is not the truest fame local fame ? And 
who can remember in the city any octogenarian gentle- 
man of aristocratic manners and classical attainments 
(Greek and Latin quotations to throw away in any con- 
versation or correspondence), aye, and even of superior 
stature, who did not in his youth pass through the col- 
lege of Orleans ? No generation since, so the octogena- 
rians say, and so we believe, compared in any respect 
with the college of Orleans generation. And to filial 
and sympathetic listeners it always seemed a social and 
educational calamity, never to be sufficiently deplored, 
that the college should have disappeared so soon, leav- 
ing behind nothing of its material existence, save a frag- 
ment of its long dormitory fashioned now into a tene- 
ment row. Young gentlemen were entered at the age 
of seven, as boarders ; the only day scholars were those 
whose parents were too poor to pay board There was 
a still lower grade, a file of charity boys, selected by 
the trustees. 



NEW OnLEANS. 183 

It was an encouraging proof of the durability of good 
impressions, to hear a school-boy of 1812, Charles 
Gayarre, tell of the first director of the college, M. Jules 
D'Avezac, an eiiwjrS from St. Domingo, and how the 
boys called him Titus because he was their delight. 
They never forgot his courtly manners, nor the tender- 
ness and kindness in his face whenever he spoke to them. 
In the expression of the day, they could not tell which 
predominated in him, the gentleman or the scholar, for 
he was a distinguished scholar ; he had translated 
Marmion into French and sent it to Walter Scott, 
and received from him a letter expressing how pleased 
he was with the muse who had repeated his verses in 
another hemisphere. But it was the second director, 
Rochefort, another St. Domingan, who, perhaps, most 
profoundly impressed the collegians. His lame foot 
naturally gained him the sobriquet of Tyrtteus. He 
made elegant translations from Horace, and when his 
scholars saw him walking his gallery, excitedly stamj:*- 
ing with his lame foot, drinking cup after cup of black 
coffee, his long silky locks of dark hair tossed back from 
his pale temj)les, his face flushed, his eyes gleaming, 
they knew he was possessed of the divine afflatus, and 
watched him in awed curiosity. He distinguished the 
best scholars by allowing them apartments on the same 
floor with him, which released them from obedience to 
other authority than his. And occasionally he distin- 
guished some of them supremely, by inviting a select 
few to dine with him, when, after dessert, he would read 
his poetry to them ; and what with the good wine and 
the good dinner, the verses never failed to elicit the 
sincerest and most rapturous applause. But the great 
event in the curriculum of these distinguished young 



184 NEW ORLEANS. 

gentlemen was wlien the director invited them to the 
Theatre d'Orleans, and marched at their head through 
the streets. On the way back he woukl test their 
judgment of the play and acting by asking their opin- 
ions, and as the collegians were at the tender age when 
actors and actresses were divinities whom they could 
not sufficiently extol and admire, it was a shock to 
them, as they trudged home from Elysium, to have 
the calm criticisms of their chief dashed like buckets of 
cold water over the flames of their enthusiasm. 

The professor of mathematics was not to be forgotten 
either, a passionate naturalist, going through the streets 
with his new-found specimens pinned to his sleeves, hat 
— anywhere, so absent-minded that he never knew in 
which direction he was walking, and walking always 
with his eyes shut. He was the delight of the street 
gamins, who used to lie in wait for him. 

"■ Ho ! Ho ! Papa Teinturier, where are you 
going ? " 

" Little devils, you know very well I am going to 
the college." 

" But you are running away from it. Papa Tienturier, 
Ho ! ho ! You are turning your back upon it." 

His other passion was horticulture, and he was to 
be often seen working the whole of a moonlit night 
through, in his garden, in the suburbs of the city, and, 
to prove his theory that a white man could stand the 
sun as well as a black, he would work in it nude 
through the dog days. 

The professor of" drawing, also from St. Domingo, -a 
superb figure, with imposing countenance and majestic 
blue eyes, cherished the illusion that he would have 
been the linest actor in the world had his ecentle birth 



NEW ORLEANS. 185 

only permitted his going- on the stage, and his schohirs 
could always switch him off from themselves into en- 
trancing declamations from Racine and Corneille, by 
asking how Talma recited such and such a passage. 
Georges, the proctor, had a Socratic face, and wore his 
hair powdered, in a cue. Bruno was the mulatto stew- 
ard, who, at six o'clock in the morning, winter and 
summer, handed out through his pantry loophole the 
cup of coffee and piece of dry bread that formed the 
entire menu of the boarders' breakfast ; Vincent, the 
doorkeeper, was wry necked and doleful faced ; Ma- 
rengo, the cook, ugly and ferocious. . . . 

The pleasant memories and chronicles of this auspi- 
cious institution come to an end in an untimely encoun- 
ter, with a historical bit of the revolutionary wreckage 
of the period, Joseph Lakanal. Is he now a vivid 
recollection anywhere outside the family and society 
archives of New Orleans ? The position of director of 
the college falling vacant, the trustees could think of 
no one more fitted to fill it than so illustrious a repre- 
sentative of learning and republicanism, then a refugee 
from the Bourbon restoration, and living within call, 
on a farm on the banks of the Ohio. A ci-devant 
priest and professor of belles-lettres, an ex-member of 
the National Convention, of the Committee of Public 
Education, of the Council of Five Hundred, one of the 
active founders of primary schools in France, a member 
of the Institute, and appointed by Napoleon superior of 
the Bonaparte Lyceum, — a man known in all positions 
for brilliant intellect and indomitable energy, — his 
qualifications for the position of director of the College 
of Orleans seemed indisputable to the trustees. To 
the good mothers of New Orleans, and to the vast ma- 



186 



NEW OBLEANS. 



jority of Creoles, however, anti-Christ alone was repre- 
sented by the ex-priest and regicide ; and the foul fiend 
would have been considered as good a director of youth. 
The trustees persisted in their choice ; the citizens in 
their opposition. The scholars were withdrawn from 
the college, until too few remained to warrant the 
opening of its doors, which were finally and definitely 
closed. 

Lakanal, however, remained in New Orleans until 
the revolution of 1830 permitted him to return to 
France. He left behind him in the city numerous 
descendants, and a memory of his striking personality, 
whicli, like his Ijrilliant intellect, although always inter- 
esting, was never estimable. 




TheQty^^<».1, 




-[^eJTu^T^ev. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BARATARIANS. 

TTTE read that, on the 11th of March, 1766, the 
^ ' sensibilities of the inhabitants of New Orleans 
were very much excited by tlie arrival in port of a 
Madame Desnoyers, a lady of St. Domingo, who, with 
her child and servant, were picked up by a French brig 
in the Gulf, where they had been cast away by pirates. 
They had been on the open sea seven days when they 
were rescued. The lady's husband had been murdered, 
with the crew of the vessel in which she was sailing. 
"Ah, those pirates!" We can imagine the volubility 
of the excited sensibilities when Madame Desnoyers 
related her sad adventures. What a rummaging of 
memory and experience must have followed! What 
a fetching forth of other harrowing adventures! No 
one went to France or to the Islands, in those days, or 
came from them, safely, but did it by divine grace, and 
under the protection of the Virgin and all the saints. 
For the black flag ruled the Mexican Gulf with the im- 
punity of the winds of heaven, and to walk the plank 
was one of the legitimate terrors of the deep. 

We get the bloody horrors of the Spanish Main now 

187 



188 NEW OBLEANS. 

in books, thrilled, mayhap, with the realism of illus- 
trations. Then, the grim facts were handed from 
memory to memory, with the red stains fresh upon 
them, and L'Olonoise, Morgan, and Black Beard were 
as fresh to the tongue as the news of yesterday, and 
it was as if, overliving their century, they, in propria 
persona, and not their progeny, were roaming the Gulf, 
with the skull and cross bones at their mastheads. 

The palmy days of piracy in the Gulf had really 
ended with the seventeenth century, by which time the 
rich towns of the Mexican and the Central American 
coast had been sucked dry, and the gold-freighted 
caravels had taken to travelling in convoy, or armed 
like men-of-war. But the old waters still offered 
opportunities not to be despised by the enterprising 
and lawless sea-folk. Spain, France, and England were 
ever at war one with another, and a commission could 
always be obtained at any one of the little islands 
they had grabbed in the Caribbean, and privateering 
included much that even a pirate could rejoice in, and 
if any one ever overstepped the limits of a commission, 
who was to testify to it ? 

In the days of the first settlement of Louisiana 
tliere had been some cordiality between Mobile and 
that privateer's nest, Carthagena, and a proposition had 
even been made by the enterprising leaders of the lat- 
ter place to transfer themselves and their business to 
jNIobile, to make it the Carthagena of the Gulf in fact. 
There is no doubt that there was a promise of profit 
in it that dazzled Iljerville, for it was at the end of 
his great schemes, as we have seen, to become a pri- 
vateer, to capture islands for France, and establish 
himself in Central America. His enemies were even 



NEW ORLEANS. 189 

then accusing his brother Chateauguay, the sea courier 
of Mobile, of being a pirate, and the suspicion was 
general that Bienville and all the Lemoyne connection 
formed a privateering company, under cloak of their 
oflicial position. 

New Orleans was ever a favourite port of the pri- 
vateers. They could so easily run into the river, sail 
up to the city, auction off their cargoes, deposit their 
prisoners, and, if the authorities were amenable, and 
they generally were, be off again with the quick de- 
spatch of regular liners, to the blue w^aters and bluer 
skies of their freehold. But privateers found more 
and more difficulties thrown in their way by inter- 
national law and order, more and more trammels cast 
around their pursuit, as it might well be called, by 
advancing civilization. When Louisiana became the 
property of the United States, it seemed as if the 
whole live industry must cease. But in this, as in 
other emergencies, only a genius was needed, to cleave 
a way through circumstance. 

The genius made his appearance, and bade fair, for a 
time, not only to be the benefactor of the privateers- 
men, but of the whole country, by inventing a good 
working bridge over the chasm, that has always been 
a yawning problem in the ethics of the United States, 
the cliasm between personal and public morality. 

The conditions in the city were most favourable for 
any such experiments. The sudden growth of its 
population, the heterogeneous mass of it, the national 
partisanship that prevented any unification in a common 
public opinion, the easy n^iorality of the dominant classes, 
and the spread of luxury through all classes; these 
were all factors, made as if to the order of Jean Lafitte. 



190 NEW ORLEANS. 

The impression is that Pierre and Jean Lafitte came 
from Bayonne. Whatever their origin, they were men 
of attractive personality, with a great business capacity, 
which had evidently been thoroughly trained during 
their past unknown life and experience. Jean, the 
younger but more conspicuous of the two, is descri])ed 
by a kind of general authority as a man of fair com- 
plexion, with black hair and eyes, wearing his beard 
clean shaven from the front of his face. He spoke 
English, French, Spanish, and Italian fluently, and 
possessed in a high degree that shining substitute for 
education, and invaluable gift to the unscrupulous 
money maker, the art of making phrases. He could, 
at any time, or in any circumstance, phrase a disinter- 
ested patriotism and a lofty morality tliat sliamed as 
flimsy pretensions the expressions of the professional 
leaders and upholders of it. 

After their arrival in New Orleans, the Lafittes were 
soon surrounded by a wide circle of friends and de- 
pendants. They evidently liad means, for they owned 
the large force of slaves which they worked in their 
blacksmith shop, on St. Philip street, between Bourbon 
and Dauphine ; they themselves lived on the north 
corner of St. Philip and Bourbon. As it is left to the 
imagination or reason of posterity to infer the process 
by which they changed their metliods of money making, 
iuiagination or reason suggests that from the first the 
blacksmith shop was but a stalking horse for a more prof- 
itable speculation, and that their large circle of friends 
and dependants were linked togetlier and to them by 
other than the primitive ties of sociability and sympathy. 

Smuggling, as well as privateering, had been always 
a regular branch of the commerce of Louisiana. In 



NEW ORLEANS. 191 

the old French colonial days the uncertainty of sup- 
plies from the mother country had rendered it almost a 
necessity of existence : under the ironclad tariff j^olicy 
of Spain it was quite a necessity. By the time of tlie 
cession of the territory to the United States, smuggling 
prices and smuggling relations had been so long estab- 
lished in the community that they had become a part of 
the habits of life there. The prices of smuggled goods 
were far cheaper than they could possibly have been if 
the customs duties had been levied upon them, and the 
relations with the purveyors of cheap goods were, what 
they will always be between consumers and purveyors 
of cheap goods, confidential and intimate ; and there 
was in addition a general feeling that a laudable prin- 
ciple of conservatism and independence, rather than 
otherwise, was shown in ignoring the American preten- 
sions of moral superiority over the old standard. 

And from time immemorial, Barataria had been asso- 
ciated with pirates, privateers, contrabandists and smug- 
glers. It will be remembered that Barataria was the 
name of the island presented by the frolicsome duchess 
to Sancho Panza, for his sins, as he learned to consider 
it. How or when the name came to Louisiana is still 
to be discovered, whether directly from Don Quixote, or 
from the source which supplied LeSage with it, the ety- 
mology of the word ; Baratear, meaning cheap, Barato, 
cheap things. The name includes all the Gulf coast 
of Louisiana between the mouth of the Mississippi and 
the mouth of the Bayou LaFourche, a considerable 
stream and the waterway of a rich and populous terri- 
tory. A thin strip of an island. Grand Terre, six miles 
long and three wide, screens from the Gulf the great 
Bay of Barataria, whose entrance is a pass with a con- 



192 NEW OB LEANS. 

stant, sure depth of water. Innumerable filaments of 
stealthy bayous running between the bay and the two 
great streams, the Mississippi and the LaFourche, fur- 
nished an incomparable system of secret intercommuni- 
cation and concealment. The shore of the bay is itself 
but a concourse of islands, huddling all around, as if 
they too, like the vessels of the first discoverers of Bara- 
taria, had been driven in there by a storm and had 
never cared to sail out again. On the islands are those 
inexplicable mammoth heaps of shell, covered by groves 
of oaks, chenieres they were called, which were selected 
by the aboriginal inhabitants as sites for their temples. 
A prominent group of these heaps, on one of the larger 
islands, was tlie notorious Great Temple, the privateers' 
chief place of deposit and trade. It is a land of prom- 
ise for light o' law gentry, and when the British fleet 
finally cleaned the islands of the Gulf of them, and broke 
up their nests, they trimmed their sails for Barataria. 
They soon found that, disguised as necessity, a brilliant 
stroke of fortune had been dealt them. They were in 
the easiest and safest reach of the great mart of the 
Mississip]3i Valley, where thousands of their kith and 
kin, driven also out of the islands by the English, walked 
the streets of the city, looking for a livelihood. 

From his first subordinate relation as agent and 
banker, Jean Lafitte increased his usefulness to the 
Baratarians, until, through success in managing their 
affairs, he obtained a complete control over them, and 
finally ruled them with the authority of a chief. This 
was when his genius had compassed their complete or- 
ganization, had united all their different and often rival 
efforts and interests into one company, or, as we would 
say to-day, formed one vast "concern "of all the pi- 



NEW ORLEANS. 



193 



rates, privateers, and freebooters of the Gulf. Lafitte, 
however, did not gain his supremacy by purely logical 
and business methods. An old survivor of the Barata- 
rians, " Nez Coupe," who lived at Grand Terre, used to 
tell that among them was one, Grambo, who boldly 
called himself a pirate and flouted Lafitte's euphemism 
of privateer, and his men were so much of his kind, 




that, one day, one of them dared an opposition to the 
new authority. Lafitte drew a pistol and shot him 
through the heart, before the whole band. 

Although during the embargo of 1808, Lafitte opened 
a shop on Royal street and assumed the insignia of 
legitimate trade, there was no serious attempt to deceive 
any one. He took and gave orders for merchandise at 
Barataria, as he would have done for Philadelphia. As 



194 NEW ORLEANS. 

a business venture his scheme became so brilliant a suc- 
cess that it made its own propaganda ; and it, not the 
law, became a converting power in the community. 

It was in 1813 that the Baratarians reached such a 
pinnacle of prosperity that not only the United States 
felt its loss of revenue, but the shipping in the port 
diminished, commerce languished, and the banks 
weakened under the continual lessening of their de- 
posits from the draining off of the trade to Barataria. 
There the l)lue waters of the bay were ever gay with 
the sails of incoming and out-going vessels ; there the 
landing-places bustled and swarmed with activity, and 
capacious warehouses stood ever gorged Avith merchan- 
dise, and the cargoes of slaves multiplied, for the con- 
traband slavers were always the keenest of the patrons 
of Barataria. The farms, orange groves, and gardens of 
the family homes of the privateei's transformed Grande 
Terre and the islands around the Grand Pass into a 
pastoral beauty which, with the marvellous witchery 
overhead and about, of cloud and sea-colouring, might 
be trvdy called heavenly. A fleet of barges plied un- 
ceasingly through the maze of bayous between the 
LaFourche and the Mississippi ; under cover of night 
their loads were ferried over the river and delivered 
to agents in New Orleans and in Donaldsonville, the 
distributing point for the upper river country, and for 
tlie Attakapas region. And, en passant, as there must, 
in every place and time, be a form of suspicion against 
the purity of rapid money making, many a notable 
fortune of that day was attril)uted to an underhand 
connection with Latitte. So perfect had the system 
and discipline become under Lalitte's extraordinary 
executive ability, that it was a mere question of time 



NEW OULEANS. 195 

when he woukl hohl in his haiids the monopoly of the 
import trade of Lonisiana, and, in a great measure, that 
of the entire Mississippi Valley. 

The national government made several attempts to 
assert its authority, but the few seizures it made dam- 
aged the privateers very little, if it did not benefit 
them directly by advancing the prices of the goods that 
escaped. Every now and then a revenue cutter was 
sent to surprise Barataria, l)ut it always found that a 
timely warning had preceded it, and not a trace was to 
be discovered of the rich booty expected. And as each 
expedition returned discomfited, the government agents 
themselves began to be suspected of a secret partner- 
ship with Latitte. 

During the spring of 1813 the scandalous notoriety 
of the prosperity of the Baratarians drew from Gov- 
ernor Claiborne a proclamation against them. He 
qualified the business roundly as piracy, and cautioned 
the people of the state against any commerce with it. 
But the governor only gained the experience of the 
na'ive in attempting the unpopular experiment of raising 
public morality to a personal standard No one paid 
so little attention to his proclamation as the Latittes 
themselves. They made their appearance in the streets 
as unconcernedly as usual, surrounded as usual by ad- 
miring friends ; their names appeared as usual among 
the patrons of the public entertainments, and, as usual, 
auctions of slaves and goods were advertised to take 
place at Barataria. 

During the summer the British patrol of the Gulf 
tried a hand against the Baratarians. One of its 
sloops of war attacked two privateers at anchor off 
Ship Island; but it met with such a spirited reception, 



196 NEW OBLEANS. 

•cUid suffered such loss, that it was glad to beat a retreat 
with all haste, the prestige as ever remaiuing with the 
privateers. 

Claiborue launched another proclamation, offering a 
reward of five hundred dollars for the arrest of Lafitte 
and his delivery to the sheriff of the parish prison, or 
to any sheriff in the state. Notwithstanding this, the 
cargoes of the privateers' prizes and slaves, four hun- 
dred and fifty at one time, were still auctioned at 
Grand Terre, and still the goods were delivered in city 
and country. The agents went now, however, well 
armed, for although Lafitte deprecated and deplored 
violence, force was met with force, and in one attempt 
to execute tlie law, a revenue collector had one of his 
men killed and two wounded. 

The governor, owning himself baffled, appealed to 
the legislature, then in session, to take some measures 
to vindicate the outraged law of the State and of the 
national government. He asked the necessary author- 
ity and appropriation to raise a volunteer company to 
send against Barataria. Lafitte only strengthened his 
guards, and made his deliveries with his wonted ex- 
actitude. His confidence in the legislature seemed 
well founded. They deferred all action in the matter 
for want of funds. 

The governor then, as the only satisfaction possible, 
secured the criminal prosecution of his adversaries. 
Indictments for piracy were found against Jean Lafitte 
and the Baratarians ; and Pierre Lafitte, charged with 
being an aider and abettor, was arrested in New Orleans 
and lodged in the Calaboose without bail. 

Jean Lafitte snapped his fingers at this, by retaining 
at a fee of twenty thousand dollars apiece, two of the 



Ni:yV OBLEANS. 197 

most distinguished members of the bar, for his defence; 
Edward Livingston and John R. Grymes. Grymes, at 
the time, was district attorney, but he resigned his 
ofhce for the fee, and when -his successor taunted him 
in open court with having been seduced out of the 
path of honour and duty by the blood-stained gohl of 
pirates, Grymes defended his honour by sending his 
arraigner a challenge, shooting him through the hip and 
crippling him for life. 

When the two eminent counsellors had cleared their 




"' i!i,'l,l\\\§W 



client, and brushed tlie cobwebs of the law out of his 
future path for him, Laiitte invited them to visit him 
at Barataria, and personally receive their honorarium. 
Grymes, a Virginian, an easy moralist and adventurous, 
accepted readily and heartily ; Livingston, the conven- 
tionally correct New Yorker, excused himself, deputing 
his colleague, at ten per cent commission, to collect 
his fee for him. Old diners-out of the time say that 
it was ever afterAvards one of Mr. Grymes's most delec- 



198 NEW OBLEANS. 

table post-pranclial stories, the description of his trip to 
Barataria, and the princely hospitality of the innocent, 
persecuted Baratarians. Lafitte kept him through a 
week of epicurean feasting and conducted him to the 
mouth of the INIississippi in a superb yawl, laden with 
boxes of Spanish gold and silver. " What a mis- 
nomer," Grymes would exclaim, "to call the most 
polished gentlemen in the world pirates ! " Par pa- 
renthese, there is always added to this the reminiscence, 
that by the time Mr. Grymes reached the city, running 
tlie gauntlet of the hospitality of the })lanters of the 
lower coast, and of their card-tables, not a cent of his 
fee remained to him. 

Whether prompted by a hint from his counsel, or 
by his own confidence in the inflexibility of Governor 
Claiborne's purpose against him, Lafitte was preparing 
to change his base and establish his Barataria in some 
more secure coast, when his good fortune threw another 
rare opportunity across his irdth. 

On an early September morning of 1814, Barataria 
was startled by a cannon-shot from the Gulf. Lafitte 
darting in his four-oared barge througli the pass, saw 
just outside in the Gulf a jaunty brig flying the British 
colours. A gig, Avith three officers in uniform, imme- 
diately advanced from her side towards him, and the 
officers introduced themselves as the bearers of impor- 
tant despatches to Mr. Lafitte. 

Lafitte, making himself known, invited them ashore, 
and led the way to his apartments. The description of 
the entertainment that followed vies with that of Mr. 
Grymes. It was such as no one but Lafitte knew how 
to give, and, without irony, no one could afi^ord to give 
so well as himself, — the choicest wines of Spain and 



NEW ORLEANS. 199 

France, tropical fruits, game, and the most tempting 
varieties of Gulf fish, all served in the costliest silver. 
And the host displayed as lavishly all the incomparable 
grace and charm of manner and brilliancy of conversa- 
tion which, among the appreciative people of Louisi- 
ana, had been accepted as legal tender for moral dues. 
Over the cigars, the rarest of Cuban brands, the packet 
of despatches was opened. The letter addressed to Mr. 
Lafitte, of Barataria, from the British commander at 
Pensacola, contained, without periphrase, an offer to 
Lafitte of thirty thousand dollars, payable in Pensacola 
or New Orleans, the rank of captain in the British army, 
and the enlistment of liis men in the navy, if he would 
assist the English in their proposed invasion of Louisi- 
ana. Enclosed with the letter was a printed proclama- 
tion addressed to the natives of Louisiana, calling upon 
them to " arise and aid in liberating their paternal soil- 
from a faithless and imbecile government." 

Lafitte, affecting to consider the proposition, asked 
permission to go and consult an old friend and associate 
whose vessel, he said, was then lying in the Bay. Dur- 
ing his absence, a band of Baratarians, who had been on 
watch, seized the officers and carried them to a strong 
place, where they were kept prisoners, under guard, all 
night. The next morning Lafitte returned, and with 
good dramatic surprise was loud in indignant blame of 
his men ; releasing the officers, instantly with profuse 
apologies, he escorted them himself through the pass, 
and left them safe aboard their brig. 

But the English letter and proclamation were already 
on their way to a friend, a member of the legislature, 
Avith an epistle conceived in the privateer chief's best 
style : — 



200 NEW ORLEANS. 

" Though pi'oscribed in ray adopted country, I will never miss 
an opportunity of serving her or of proving that she has never 
ceased to be dear to me. ... I may have evaded the payment of 
duties to the custom house, but I have never ceased to be a good 
citizen, and all the offences I have committed have been forced 
ujion me by certain vices of the law. . . . Our enemies have en- 
deavoured to work upon me by a motive which few men would 
have resisted. ... A brother in irons, a brother who is very dear 
to me and whose deliverer I might become; and I declined the 
proposal, well persuaded of his innocence. . . ." 

He did his brother and himself injustice. Pierre 
Lafitte, as Jean Ivnew, had long since given leg-bail, 
the other having been refused him, and was even then 
enjoying his wonted security and comfort in New 
Orleans. 

A few days later Lafitte sent, in a second letter to 
his friend, an anonymous communication from Havana, 
giving important information about the intended opera- 
tions of the British. He also enclosed a letter to Gov- 
ernor Claiborne : '■'• In the firm persuasion," he wrote, 
"that the choice made of you to fill the office of first 
magistrate of this city was dictated by the esteem of 
your fellow citizens, and was conferred on merit, I offer 
to you to restore to this State several citizens who per- 
haps in your eyes have lost their sacred title. I offer 
you them, however, such as you would wish to find them, 
ready to exert their utmost efforts in defence of their 
country. . . . The only reward I ask ... is that a 
stop be put to the proscription against me arid my ad- 
herents, by an act of oblivion for all that has been done 
hitherto. ... I am the stray sheep wishing to return 
to the sheep-fold. If you were thoroughly acquainted 
with the nature of my offences, I should appear to 
you much less guilty and still worthy to discharge the 



NEW ORLEANS. 201 

duties of a good citizen. . . . Should your answer not 
be favourable to my ardent desires, I declare to you 
that I shall instantly leave the country, to avoid the 
imputation of having Co-operated toward an invasion 
on this point, which cannot fail to take place, and to 
rest secure in the acquittal of my own conscience." The 
governor, to whom the entire correspondence was for- 
warded, submitted it to a council of the principal officers 
of the army, navy, and militia ; they recommended no 
intercourse nor correspondence whatever with any of 
the people. Governor Claiborne alone dissented. 

One of the many Lalitte episodes, transmitted through 
feminine memories of the time, may be inserted here. 
It was related by a grandmother, whose grandmother 
lived on a plantation through which Lafitte, called by 
her a Jlibustier^ always passed on his route between Bara- 
taria and New Orleans ; and he seldom passed without 
taking supper with Madame : " I assure you he was a 
fascinating gentleman of fine appearance, and although 
described by the Americans as a pirate, was in reality a 
privateer, furnished with letters of marque from the 
French government. The fact that my grandmother 
received him as a friend, is a sufficient answer to any 
doubts as to his qualifications. The very day of Clai- 
borne's proclamation putting a price upon Lafitte's 
head, in fact it was a reward for his arrest, he made his 
appearance at the plantation of my grandmother. She, 
with extreme agitation and anxiety, told him of the 
governor's act. 'You must not go to the city. You 
must return at once after supper. Your life, I tell you 
it's your life that is in danger.' Lafitte laughed her 
fears to scorn. In the midst of her arguments and his 
gay expostulations, the servant announced another ar- 



202 NEW ORLEANS. 

rival, another guest. My grandmother turned her 
head, and at the instant was embraced by her most 
intimate friend, Mrs. Claiborne, the wife of the gov- 
ernor, tlie most beautiful of Creoles, the most coquet- 
tish, the most charming woman in the city. In great 
perplexity, but conquering nevertheless all traces of 
it, my grandmother, with quick presence of mind, 
introduced Monsieur Lafitte as Monsieur Clement, and 
then hurriedly went out of the room, leaving her guests 
together. She called Henriette, her confidential ser- 
vant. ' Henriette,' she said, looking straight into the 
eyes of the devoted negress, 'Henriette, Governor Clai- 
borne has put a price upon M. Lafitte's head. Any one 
who takes him prisoner and carries him to tlie gov- 
ernor will receive five hundred dollars, and M. Lafitte's 
head will be cut off. Send all the other servants away, 
all the children. Do jon set tlie table and wait upon 
us yourself alone, and remember to call Monsieur 
Lafitte Monsieur Clement — Monsieur Clement, and be 
careful before Madame Claiborne.' The woman re- 
sponded as was expected of her, and acted with perfect 
tact and discretion. 

" The supper passed off brilliantly. The beautiful, 
fascinating woman instantaneously made an impression 
on the no less handsome and fascinating man, who 
never appeared bolder, more original, more sure of 
himself. The repartees were sparkling, the laughter 
continuous, the conversation full of entrain., and s(^ 
pleasing to both as to render them oblivious of all 
my grandmother's efforts to put an end to the meal. 
And afterwards she could not separate the new ac- 
quaintances until late bedtime. 

" ' My friend,' she then said to Lafitte, ' return, 



NEW ORLEANS. . 203 

return immediately. Indeed, your life is in da-nger. 
Go where you can defend yourself.' " 

Lafitte promised and took his leave, but it was 
always supposed that he spent the night on the plan- 
tation, held by the glamour of the presence of the 
wife of the governor, his great enemy. 

The next day, Madame C'laiborne returned to the 
city, voluble in praise of the most remarkable man 
she had ever met as she called him. She was sitting 
in her boudoir, which opened on the corridor leading 
into her husband's office, when raising her eyes from her 
sewing at the sound of a step, she there saw passing 
the object of her thoughts, her conquest of the even- 
ing before. "Ah! Monsieur, I am charmed to meet 
you. ..." After a moment's effusion on both sides, 
he asked permission to go into her husband's office. 
" Certainly, Monsieur, certainly." She led the way 
herself, and, piqued by curiosity, she remained not 
out of eyesight or earshot of the interview. 

On crossing the threshold, Lafitte put his hands 
to a concealed belt, and drew two pistols, cocked 
them, and holding them in readiness, introduced him- 
self : — 

"Sir, I am Lafitte." 

''Sir. ..." 

" One moment, Sir. You have j)ut a price upon my 
head." 

" Upon the head of a pirate." 

" Wait, Sir, I have come voluntarily to you, to make 
a personal offer of my services in repelling tlie British. 
I have a compau}^ of men, brave, disciplined, armed, 
and true to the death. Will the State accept of their 
services against the enemy or not ? " 



204 2fEW ORLEANS. 

The governor looked at the man, and considered. 
Madame CUaiborne who, as you may believe, had rushed 
in from the corridor, was standing by her husband, 
darting her brilliant black eyes anxiously from his face 
to that of her handsome conquest. 

" Sir," said the governor, "I accept." 

" The men. Sir, will at daylight to-morrow be await- 
ing your orders at Madame 's plantation." 

Saluting deferentially, he walked proudly out of the 
room. 

At that very time, as it happened, the national 
government had at last managed to organize an expe- 
dition against Barataria, which had some prospect of 
success. It Avas commanded by Commodore Patterson 
of the U. S. Navy, and Colonel Ross, of the army, 
stationed at New Orleans, awaiting the British inva- 
sion, and they, the gossip goes, were lured to energy 
by the glittering booty of gold and silver and precious 
treasures known to be at the pirates' retreat. 

Supposing that the military and naval preparations 
were intended for the British, the Baratarians were for 
once completely surprised. Only the two Lafittes and 
a few followers escaped, fleeing to the German coast, 
where they found refuge. The settlement at Barataria 
was destroyed, and the two United States officers 
returned to New Orleans in triumph, with a large 
number of prisoners, who were lodged in the Cala- 
boose, and a fleet of vessels loaded with the rich 
sjjoils, which they claimed as prizes. In the booty 
was some jewelry which Avas identified as the property 
of a Creole lady who had sailed from New Orleans 
seven years before, and liad never been heard of after- 
wards. This circumstantial evidence was the only 



NEW OB LEANS. 205 

proof ever produced that a rigid line had not always 
been drawn between piracy and privateering by the 
Baratarians. 

When Lafitte's letters, documents, and offer were 
forwarded to General Jackson, then at Mobile, he 
spurned them with scorn, having already by procla- 
mation denounced the British for their overtures to 
"robbers, pirates, and hellish bandits." Nevertheless, 
on the General's arrival in New Orleans, Jean Lafitte 
waited on him in person, and firmly renewed his offer. 
By this time Jackson was conscious of the feebleness 
of the resources at hand to defend the country, and the 
strength of tlie armament coming against it ; and he 
saw tlie man. The offer was accepted. Jackson's gen- 
eral orders of the 21st of January, 1815, after his vic- 
tory, give the sequel : — 

" Captains Dominique and Behiche, lately commanding priva- 
teers at Barataria, with part of their former crews . . . were 
stationed at batteries Nos. 3 and 4. The General cannot avoid 
giving his warm approbation of the manner in which tliese 
gentlemen have uniformly conducted themselves while under his 
command, and the gallantry with wliich they redeemed the pledge 
they gave at the opening of the campaign, to defend the country. 
The brothers Lafitte have exhibited the same courage and fidel- 
ity, and the General promises that the government shall be duly 
apprized of their conduct." 

On the part of the government, so apprised, the 
President, in his message on the Battle of New 
Orleans, issued a full and free pardon '" to the viola- 
tors of revenue, trade, and commerce by the inhabitants 
of the Island of Barataria," concluding handsomely, 
as became the President of the United States after so 
glorious a victory: — 



206 



NEW ORLEANS. 



" Offenders who have refused to become tlie 
associates of the enemy in war upon the most 
seducing terms of invitation, and who have 
aided to repel his hostile invasion of the terri- 
tory of the United States, can no longer be 
considered as objects of punishment, but as 
objects of generous forgiveness." 



/'/^f 



z^/''. 






During the rejoicings and festivities 
over the victory the two Lafittes made 
a last brief appearance in the social 
life of the city, in token of which 
there are two anecdotes. In an affair 
of honour between two noted citizens, 
Pierre Lafitte was selected as the 
second by the one, M. de St. Genie 
by the other. The latter, who had 
distinguished himself during the re- 
cent campaign as captain of one of the 
Creole companies, had no social supe- 
rior in the city, and on points of 
honour was looked upon by the whole 
population as a Chevalier Bayard. 
His consenting, therefore, to act with 
Lafitte, was accepted as recognition, 
ample and complete, of the latter's 
social rehabilitation. At a ball given 
by the officers of the army. General 
Coffee and Jean Lafitte were both 
among tlie guests. On their being 
brought together and introduced, 
General Coffee showed some uncer- 



li_ '<'t'^^'^' tainty, or hesitation, of manner. 1 he 



T^e.~^ 



T&vt. 



Baratarian, lifting his head and ad- 



NEW ORLEANS. 207 

vancing haughtily, repeated with emphasis, " Lafitte, 
the pirate." 

At this propitious moment, the Lafittes left New 
Orleans forever, and nothing so well as this leaving of 
it proves their verbal assurances of love for the city, 
and their desire to stand well in the estimation of the 
community. They formed a settlement at Galvezton, 
and, under letters of marque from some South Amer- 
ican state, they preyed, for a In-ief space, right roy- 
ally upon the commerce of Spain. Summoned by the 
United States to produce the national authority by 
which he occupied the harbour of Galvezton, Lafitte 
answered that he had found the port abandoned, and 
had taken possession of it with the idea of preserving 
and maintaining it at his own cost. His words are not 
unworthy quotation : — 

" In so doing I was satisfying the two passions which impe- 
riously predominate in me ; tliat of offering an asylum to the 
armed vessels of the party of independence, and of placing myself 
in position (considering its proximity t® the U. S.) to fly to their 
assistance should circumstances demand it. . . . I know, Sir, 
that I have been calumniated in the vilest manner by persons in- 
vested with certain authority, but, fortified by a conscience which 
is irreproachable in every respect, my internal tranquility has not 
been affected, and, in spite of my enemies, I shall obtain the 
justice due me." 

Shortly afterwards, a United States cruiser having 
been attacked in the Gulf and robbed of a large sum of 
money, the Galvezton settlement was broken up. Be- 
yond a stray indication that they were going to attach 
themselves to the government of Buenos Ayres, noth- 
ing further is definitely known of the Lafittes. But 
tradition still cherishes them, and there has been no 



208 



NEW ORLEANS. 



lack of stories about their after career. Until 1821. 
pirates were the terror of the Gulf, and every pirate 
was feared as a Lalitte; and, without any apparent 
authority whatever, it is still fondly believed that the 
beautiful Theodosia, the daughter of Aaron Burr, who 
met an unknown fate in the open seas, was made to 
walk the plank under his command. 




About 1820, a United States revenue cutter, after a 
rattling engagement, captured a pirate schooner, with 
her prize, in the lakes. They were carried through 
the Bayou St. John, to New Orleans. The crew were 
tried, and three of them hanged in the Place d' Amies, 
as the oldest inhabitant of not so long ago saw, and 
ever afterwards loved to tell about. 

Dominicpie You held to his regenerated citizenship 



NE]V ORLEANS. 209 

ill New Orleans. When Jackson paid his ever mem- 
orable visit to the city seven years after the battle, 
one of his first inquiries was for his friend Dominique, 
and it is said that no feature of that triumphal re-cele- 
bration more gratified him than the breakfast given 
him, with true privateer's hospitality and cheer, by 
the whilom "hellish bandit." 

When, after a rare old age, Dominique You died, 
he had a funeral procession which, for years, was a 
local standard for size and impressiveness. His tomb 
can be seen in one of the St. Louis cemeteries, and 
if one doubts the virtues, respectability, of Dominique, 
or General Jackson's esteem for him, one can do no 
better to fortify one's convictions than make a pilgrim- 
age to his tomb and read his epitaph. It is from no 
less source than Voltaire and " La Henriade: " — 

" Intrcpide guerriev, siir la terre et sur I'onde, 
II sut, dans cent combats, signaler sa valeiir 
Et ce nouveau Bayard, sans reproche et sans peur 
Aurait pii sans trembler, voir s'ecrouler le monde." 

Captain Beluche, who was a Creole by birth, passed 
into the service of Venezuela, as commander of her 
navy. 

The Baratarians drifted back to their old haunts, 
became fishermen and oyster men ; and, bandits though 
they ever appeared in face and dress, peddled their 
Gulf delicacies peaceably enough through the streets of 
the city to the cry of " Barataria! Barataria! " Their 
descendants still live in the " Chenieres," a hardy, 
handsome race of men and women, speaking a strange 
mixture of Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Over 
and over again, cyclonic Gulf storms have swept them 



210 



NEW Oi: LEANS. 



with their habitations, a wild ruin of drift and corpses, 
far ont into the Gulf ; and over and over again they 
have seemed to resurrect ; a year or two and Barataria 
would be once more peopled and rebuilt. 

Lafcadio Hearn describes the Grand Terre of to-day, 
" a wilderness of wind-swept grasses and sinewy reeds 
waving away from a thin beach, ever speckled with 
drift and decaying things ; — wormriddled timbers and 
dead porpoises. Sometimes, of Autumn evenings, when 
the hollow of heaven flares like the interior of a chalice, 
and waves and clouds are flying in one wild rout of 
broken gold, you may see the tawny grasses all covered 
with something like husks. . . . But if you approach, 
those pale husks will break open to display strange 
splendours of scarlet and seal brown with arabesque 
mottlings in white and black ; they change into won- 
drous living blossoms, which . . . rise in the air and 
flutter away by thousands to settle down farther off, 
and turn again into wheat-covered husks once more 
. . . a whirling flower drift of sleepy butterflies." 





CHAPTER XI. 

THE GLORIOUS EIGHTH OF JANUARY. 

TN the early summer of 1814, the reverberating news 
-*- of the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, and of his aljdi- 
eation at Fontainebleau, shook tlie city to its founda- 
tions ; and the first instinctive impulse of the people 
was a passionate outbreak of love to the mother coun- 
try. The city became French as it had not been since 
the days of Ulloa. Popular feeling- frenzied and raved 
in talk. In the family, in the coffee-houses, in the new 
exchanges, the refugees from every nation and every 
political party, the new Americans and the ancient 
Louisianians, as they were called, assembled in their 
different coteries, to throw, very much as they do now, 

211 



212 NEW OBLEANS. 

their tempers, prejudices, and passions into political 
opinions. 

There was no doubt that victorious England, her 
hands at last liberated, would give the United States 
a demonstration more characteristic of lier military 
ability than she had exhibited up to this time in the 
war between them. The report came that, as a condi- 
tion of peace with France, England would demand the 
retrocession of Louisiana to Spain, who had indignantly 
protested at Napoleon's sharp sale of it to the United 
States ; and, trailing after this report, came from 
Spanish officers in Havana and Pensacola, to friends in 
Louisiana, and even from the governor of Pensacola, 
and from the Spanish minister in Washington, expres- 
sions of belief that Spain would take up arms to re- 
possess herself of her former colony. 

Hardly had this been digested colloquially, when 
tidings arrived of the presence of British ships in the 
Gulf, and the landing of British regulars at Pensacola 
and Apalachicola, where, with the passive, if not active, 
assistance of the Spanish authorities, they were rallying 
the Indians, enlisting and uniforming them into com- 
panies. Then came Lafitte's communications from 
Barataria. 

It must be acknowledged, if ever there were dreams 
to give a city pause. New Orleans had them then and 
there. Even now one is chary of publishing all the 
national weaknesses that, in this crucial moment, the 
city's examination of couscience revealed. There were 
no friends of England in the community, but there 
were many and ardent ones of Spain, and as for the 
French Creoles, the United States had been at best, in 
their eyes, but a churlish and grudging stepmother to 



NEW ORLEANS. 213 

Louisiana, apparently intent only on getting back tlie 
worth of her money paid for the colony. And besides, 
the government at Washington, with its Capitol burnt 
and its neighbourhood ravaged by a force not one-fourth 
as large as the one preparing against New Orleans, 
offered anything but an inspiring example. And there 
was slavery. The English, by a mere proclamation of 
emancipation, could array inside the State against the 
whites an equal number of blacks and produce a 
situation from which the stoutest hearts recoiled in 
dismay. The neighbouring South was too weak in 
population and resources to count upon for any appre- 
ciable help. There was only the one hope, but it was 
a good one, in the West, the brawny, indomitable 
West I So long as the Mississippi flowed through its 
great valley to the Gulf, New Orleans felt confident 
that the West would never leave her without a com- 
jDanion in arms to fight against foreign subjugation. 

The federal government stationed four companies of 
regulars in the city, ordered out the full quota of the 
militia of the State, one thousand men, to be held in 
readiness, put Commodore Patterson in charge of the 
naval defences, and appointed Major-Cjeneral Andrew 
Jackson to take command in the threatened section. 
After that, it washed its hands of the whole affair. 

In September the British opened their campaign, as 
the military quidnuncs in the city had predicted they 
would, by an attack upon Fort Bowyer, which, if taken, 
would give them command of Mobile Bay, a solid posi- 
tion on the Gulf, and an invaluable basis of operation 
against New Orleans. But the new general-comman- 
dant, who, so far from being a military quidnunc, had 
only the military training of rough and tumble, hand- 



214 



NEW ORLEANS. 



to-hand fighting with Indians, forestalled the design of 
the British with all the prescience of the most practised 
tactician. He threw a handful of men into Fort Bow- 
yer, one hundred and thirty, with twenty pieces of 
cannon, and these held it against the four British ships, 
with their ninety guns and the six hundred marines, and 
regulars, and two hundred Indians that came against it. 
The elated Jackson sent the news of this success from 




Mobile with two ringing proclamations to the Louisian- 
ians, one to the white and one to the free coloured 
population, treating his foes with fine and most inspir- 
ing contempt: — 

"■ The base, perfidious Britons have attempted to 
invade your country. They had the temerity to attack 
Fort Bowyer with their incongruous horde of Indians, 
negroes, and assassins ; they seem to have forgotten that 



NEW ORLEANS. 215 

this fort was defended by free men," etc., etc. After 
which, to give the Spaniards a lesson in the Laws of 
neutrality, he attacked and too]j; Pensacola. 

It was on the morning of the 2nd of December, 1814, 
as our preferred chronicler of this period, Alexander 
Walker, relates that General Jackson and escort trotted 
their horses up the road that leads from Spanish Fort to 
the city. On arriving at the junction of Canal C'aron- 
delet and Bayou St. John, the party dismounted before 
an old Si)anish villa, the residence of one of the promi- 
nent bachelor citizens of the day, where, in the marble- 
paved hall, breakfast had been prepared for them ; a 
breakfast such as luxury then could command from 
Creole markets and cooks, for a guest whom one wished 
to honour. But, the story goes, the guest of honour 
partook, and that sparingly, only of hominy. This 
reached a certain limit of endurance. At a whisper 
from a servant, the host excused himself, left the table 
and passed into the antechamber. He was accosted by 
his fair friend and neighbour, who had volunteered her 
assistance for the occasion. 

"Ah, my friend, how could you play such a trick 
upon me? You asked me to prepare your house to 
receive a great general. I did so. And I prepared a 
splendid breakfast. And now ! I find that my labour 
is all thrown away upon an old ' Kaintuck ' flatboatman, 
instead of a great general Avith plumes, epaulettes, long 
sword, and moustache." 

Indeed, to female eyes, trained upon a Galvez, a 
Carondelet, a Casa Calvo, Andrew Jackson must have 
represented indeed a very unsatisfactory commandant- 
general. His dress, a small leathern cap, a short blue 
Spanish cloak, frayed trousers, worn and rusty high- 



216 I7EW ORLEANS. 

top boots, was deficient; and, even for a flatboatman, 
threadbare. But his personality, to equitable female 
eyes, should have beeru impressive, if not pleasing: a 
tall, gaunt, inflexibly erect figure; a face sallow, it is 
true, and seamed and wrinkled with the burden of heavy 
thought, but expressing to the full the stern decision 
and restless energy which seemed the very soul of the 
man ; heavy brows shaded his fierce, bright eyes, and 
iron-grey hair bristled thick over his head. 

From the villa the party trotted up the Bayou road 
to its intersection with the city, where stood a famous 
landmark in old times, the residence of General Daniel 
Clarke, a great American in the business and political 
world of the time. Here carriages awaited them and a 
formal delegation of welcome, all the notabilities, civil 
and military, the city afforded, headed by Governor 
Claiborne and the mayor of the city, a group which, 
measured by after achievements, could not be considered 
inconsiderable eitlier in number or character. 

General Jackson, who talked as he fought, by nature, 
and had as much use for fine words as for fine clothes, 
answered the stately eloquence addressed him, briefly 
and to the point. He had come to protect the city, 
and he would drive the enemy into the sea or perish in 
the attempt. It was the eloquence for the people and 
the time. As an interpreter repeated the words in 
French, they passed from lip to lip, rousing all the 
energy they conveyed. They sped with Jackson's 
carriage, into the city, where heroism has ever been 
most infectious, and the crowd that ran after him 
through the streets, to see him alight, and to cheer the 
flag unfurled from his headquarters on Royal street, 
expressed not so much the conviction that the saviour 



NEW OELEANS 217 

of the city was there in that house, as that the saviour 
of the city was there, in every man's souL 

That evening the "Kaintuck" flatboatman was again 
subjected to the ordeal of woman's eyes. A dinner 
party of the most fashionable society had already 
assembled at a prominent and distinguished house, 
when the host announced to his wife that he had invited 
General Jackson to join them. She, as related by a 
descendant, did what she could under the trying cir- 
cumstances, and so well prepared her guests for the 
unexpected addition to their party, that the ladies kept 
their eyes fixed upon the door, with the liveliest 
curiosity, expecting to see it admit nothing less than 
some wild man of the woods, some curious specimen of 
American Indian, in vmiform. When it opened and 
General Jackson entered, grave, self-possessed, martial, 
urbane, their astonishment was not to be gauged. 
When the dinner was over and he had taken his leave, 
the ladies all exclaimed, with one impulse, to the 
hostess: "Is this your red Indian! Is this your wild 
man of the woods ! He is a prince." 

From now on the city was transformed into a martial 
camp. Every man capable of bearing arms was mus- 
tered into service. All the French emigres in the com- 
munity volunteered in the ranks, only too eager for an- 
other chance at the English. Prisoners in the Calaboose 
were released and armed. To the old original line com- 
pany of freemen of colour, another was added, formed 
of coloured refugees from St. Domingo, men who had 
sided with the whites in the revolution there. Lafitte, 
notwithstanding the breaking up and looting of his 
establishment at Barataria, made good his offer to the 
State, by gathering his Baratarians from the Calaboose 



218 JV^ir ORLEANS. 

and their liidiiig places, and organizing them into two 
companies under the command of Dominique You and 
Beluche. From the parishes came hastily gathered 
volunteers, in companies and singly. The African 
slaves, catching the infection, laboured with might and 
main upon the fortifications ordered by Jackson, and 
even the domestic servants, it is recorded, burnished 
their masters' arms and prepared ammunition, with the 
ardour of patriots. The old men were formed into a 
home guard and given the patrol of the city. Martial 
law was proclaimed. The reinforcements from the 
neighbouring territories arrived : a fine troop of horse 
from Mississippi, under the gallant Hinds ; and Coffee, 
with his ever-to-be-remembered brigade of "Dirty 
Shirts," who after a march of eight hundred miles 
answered Jackson's message to hasten, by covering in 
two days the one hundred and fifty miles from Baton 
Rouge to New Orleans. At the levee, barges and flat- 
boats landed the militia of Tennessee, under Carroll. 

On the 10th of December, eight days after Jackson's 
arrival in the city, the British fleet entered Lake Borgne. 
In the harbour of Ship Island, in the pass between it 
and Cat Island, out to Chandeleur Islands, as far as the 
spyglass could carry, the eye of the look-out saw, and 
saw British sails. Never before had so august a visita- 
tion honoured these distant waters. The very names of 
the ships and of their^commanders were enough to create 
a panic. The Tonnant, the heroic Tonnant, of eighty 
guns, captured from the French at the battle of the 
Nile, with Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane and 
Rear-Admiral Codrington ; the Royal Oak, seventy-four 
guns, Rear-Admiral Malcolm ; the Ramilies, under Sir 
Thomas Hardy, Nelson's friend ; the Norge, the Bed- 



NE]V ORLEANS. L>10 

ford, the Asia, all seveuty-foiir gunners ; the Ariiiide, 
Sir Thomas Trowbridge; the Sea Horse, Sir James 
Alexander Gordon, fresh from the banks of the Poto- 
mac, — there were fifty sail, in all carrying over a thou- 
sand guns, commanded by the SUte of the British navy, 
steered by West Indian pilots, followed by a smaller 
fleet of transports, sloops, and schooners. It seemed 
only proper that with such ships and such an army as 
the ships carried, a full and complete list of civil 
officers should be sent out, to conduct the government 
of the country to be annexed to His Majesty's Domin- 
ions, — revenue collectors, printers, clerks, Avith print- 
ing presses and office paraphernalia. Merchant ships 
accompanied the squadron to carry home the spoils ; 
and even many ladies, wives of the officers, came along 
to share in the glory and pleasure of the expedition. 
" I expect at this moment," remarked Lord Castlereagh, 
in Paris, almost at the exact date, "that most of the 
large sea-port towns of America are laid in ashes, that 
we are in possession of New Orleans, and have command 
of all the rivers of the Mississippi Valley and the Lakes, 
and that the Americans are now little better than pris- 
oners in their own country." 

The city must indeed have appeared practically de- 
fenceless to any foe minded to take it. There was no 
fortification, properly speaking, at the Balise. Fort 
St. Philip, on the river, below the city, was small, out 
of repair, badly equipped and poorly munitioned. 
Back of the city there was pretty, picturesque, Sijanish 
Fort, a military bauble ; a hasty battery had been 
thrown up where Bayou Chef Menteur joins Bayou 
Gentilly, and further out, on the Rigolets, was the little 
mud fort of Petites Coquilles (now Fort Pike). As 



220 NEW ORLEANS. 

every bayou from lake to river was, in high water, a 
high road to the city, these had been closed and rafted 
by order of the government, and, by the same token, 
Bayou Manchac has remained closed ever since. 

Vice-Admiral Cochrane promptly commenced his pro- 
gramme. Forty-five launches and barges, armed with 
carronades and manned by a thousand soldiers and 
sailors, were sent to clear the lakes of the American flag. 

What the Americans called their fleet on the lakes 
consisted of six small gunboats, carrying thirtj^-five 
guns, commanded by Lieutenant T. Ap Catesby Jones. 
These liad been sent by Commodore Patterson to ob- 
serve the English fleet, and prevent, if possible, the 
landing of their troops. If pressed by a superior force, 
they were to fall back through the Rigolets, upon Fort 
Petites Coquilles. In obeying his orders, Jones in vain 
tried to beat through the Rigolets, with the current 
against him ; his boats were carried into the narrow 
channel between Malheureux Island and Point Clear, 
wliere they stuck in the mud. Jones anchored there- 
fore in as close line as he could across the channel, and 
after a spirited address to his force of one hundred 
and eighty-two men, awaited the attack. 

It was about ten o'clock of a beautiful December 
morning. The early fog lifted to show the British 
halting for breakfast, gay, careless, and light-hearted 
as if on a picnic party. The surface of the l;il<e was 
without a ripple, the blue heavens without a cloud. At 
a signal the advance was resumed. On the flotilla came 
in the beautiful order and in the perfect line and time 
with which the sturdy English oarsmen had pulled it 
through the thirty-six miles without pause or l)reak, 
from Ship Island, each boat with its glittering brass 



NEW ORLEANS. 221 

carroiiade at its prow, its serried files of scarlet uni- 
forms and dazzling crest of bayonets, and the six oars 
on each side, flashing in and out of the water. 

The American boats lay silent, quiet, apparently life- 
less. Then, a flash, a roar, and a shot went crashing 
through the scarlet line. With an answer from their 
carronades, the British barges leaped forward, and 
clinched with the gunboats. It was musket to musket, 
pistol to pistol, cutlass to cutlass, man to man, with 
shouts and cries, taunts and imprecations, and the 
steady roar throughout of the American cannon, cut- 
ting with deadly aim into the open British barges, 
capsizing, sinking them; the water spotting with strug- 
gling red uniforms. 

Two of the American boats were captured, and their 
guns turned against the others, and the British barges 
closing in, the American crews one by one were beaten 
below their own decks and overpowered. By half-past 
twelve the British flag waved triumphant over Lake 
Horgne. 

The British troops were forwarded in transports 
from the fleet to the He des Pois, near the mouth of 
Pearl River, a bare little island and a desolate camp, 
where, with no tents, the men were drenched with dew, 
and chilled with frosts during the night, and, during the 
day, parched with the sun ; many died from it. From 
some flsherman it was learned that about flfty miles west 
of He aux Pois there was a bayou tliat had not been 
closed and was not defended and which was navigable 
by barges for twelve miles, Avhere it joined a canal, 
leading to a plantation on the river, a few miles below 
tlie city. To test the accuracy of the information. Sir 
Alexander Cochrane despatched a boat under charge of 



222 NEW ORLEANS. 

the Hon. Captain Spencer, son of the Earl of Spencer, 
to reconnoitre the route. Arrived at the Spanish fisher- 
men's village on the banks of Bayou Bienvenu, the 
young- captain and a companion, disguising themselves 
in the blue shirts and tarpaulins of fishermen, paddled 
in a pirogue through the bayou and canal (Villere's), 
walked to the Mississippi, took a drink of its waters, 
surveyed the country, interviewed some negroes ; and 
returned with the report that the route was not only 
practicable, but easy. 

Sixteen hundred men and two cannon were embarked 
immediately for the bayou. The sky was dark and low- 
ering ; heavy rains fell during the whole day ; the 
fires of charcoal, which could be kept burning in day- 
light, were extinguished at night ; and the sharp frost 
cramped the soldiers into numbness. A detail sent 
in advance on a reconnoissance surprised and capt- 
ured four pickets, who were held at the mouth of the 
bayou until the flotilla came up to it. One of the 
prisoners, a Creole gentleman, was presented to Sir 
Alexander Cochrane, the British commander, a rough- 
looking, white-haired old gentleman, dressed in plain 
and much worn clothing, and to General Keane, a 
tall, youthful, black-whiskered man in military un- 
dress. Their shrewd cross-questioning extracted from 
the Creole only the false statement that Jackson's forces 
in the city amounted to twelve thousand men, and that 
he had stationed four thousand at English Turn. As 
the untruth had been preconcerted, it was confirmed by 
the other prisoners, and believed by the British officers. 

At dawn tlie barges entered the bayou. The Eng- 
lish sailors, standing to their oars, pushed their heavy 
loads through the tortuous shallow water. By nine 



NEW OB LEANS. 223 

o'clock the detachment was safe on shore. " The 
phace," writes the English authority, an officer dur- 
ing the campaign, " was as wild as it is possible to 
imagine. Gaze where we might, nothing could be 
seen except a huge marsh covered with tall reeds. 
The marsh became gradually less and less continuous, 
being intersected by wide spots of firm ground ; the 
reeds gave place by degrees to wood, and the wood to 
enclosed fields." 

The troops landed, formed into columns, and, push- 
ing after the guides and engineers, began their march. 
The advance was slow and toilsome enough to such 
novices in swamping. But cypresses, palmettoes, cane 
brakes, vines, and mire were at last worried through, 
the sun began to brighten the ground, and the front 
ranks quickening their step, broke joyfully into an 
open field, near the expected canal. Beyond a distant 
orange grove, the buildings of the Villere plantation 
could be seen. Advancing rapidly along the side of 
the canal, and under cover of the orange grove, a 
company gained the buildings, and, spreading out, sur- 
rounded them. The surprise was absolute. Major 
Villere and his brother, sitting on the front gallery of 
their residence, jumped from their chairs at the sight 
of redcoats before them ; their rush to the other side 
of the house only showed them that they were bagged. 

Secured in one of his own apartments, under guard 
of British soldiers, the young Creole officer found in 
his reflections the spur to a desperate attempt to save 
himself and his race from a suspicion of disloyalty to 
the United States, which, under the circumstances, 
might easily be directed against tliem by the Ameri- 
cans. Springing suddenly through his guards, and 



224 NEW ORLEANS. 

leaping from a window, he made a rush for the high 
fence that enclosed tlie yard, throwing down the soldiers 
in his way. He cleared the fence at a bound and ran 
across the open field that separated hira from the 
forest. A shower of musket balls fell around him. 
" Catch or kill him ! " was shouted behind him. But 
the light, agile Creole, with the Creole hunter's training 
from infancy, was more than a match for his pursuers 
in such a race as that. He gained the woods, a 
swamp, while they were crossing the field, spreading 
out as they ran to shut him in. He sprang over the 
boggy earth, into the swamp, until his feet, sinking 
deeper and deeper, clogged, and stuck. The Britons 
were gaining ; had reached the swamp. He could hear 
them panting and bloAving, and the orders which made 
his capture inevitable. There was but one chance; he 
sprang up a cypress tree, and strove for the thick moss 
and branches overhead. Half-way up, he heard a whim- 
pering below. It was the voice of his dog, his favourite 
setter, whining, fawning, and looking up to him with 
all the pathos of brute fidelity. There was no choice ; 
it was her life or his, and with his, perhaps the surprise 
and capture of the city. Dropping to the earth, he 
seized a billet of wood, and aimed one blow between 
the setter's devoted eyes ; with the tears in his own 
eyes, he used to relate. To throw the body to one side, 
snatch some brush over it, spring to the tree again, was 
the work of an instant. As he drew the moss around 
his crouching figure, and stilled his hard breathing, the 
British floundered past. When they abandoned their 
useless search, he slid from his covert, pushed through 
the swamp to the next plantation, and carried the alarm 
at full speed to the city. 



NEW OBLEANS. 225 

The British troops moved up the road along the 
levee, to the upper line of the plantation, and took 
their position in three columns. Headquarters were 
established in the Villere residence, in the yard of 
which a small battery was thrown up. They were 
eight miles from the city and separated from it by fif- 
teen plantations, large and small. IJy pushing forward, 
General Keane in two hours could liave reached the 
city, and the battle of New Orleans would have taken 
place then and there, and most probably a different 
decision would have been wrested from victory. The 
British officers strongly urged this bold line of action, 
but Keane believing the statement that General Jackson 
had an army of about fifteen thousand in New Orleans, 
a force double his own, feared being cut off from the 
fleet. He therefore concluded to delay his advance 
until the other divisions came up. This was on the 
twenty-third day of December. 

"Gentlemen," said Jackson to his aids and secretaries, 
at half-past one o'clock, when Villere had finished his 
report, "the British are below ; we must fight them 
to-night." 

He issued his orders summoning his small force from 
their various posts. Plauche's battalion was two miles 
away, at Bayou St. John, Coffee five miles off, at 
Avart's, the coloured battalion, at Gentilly. They were 
commanded to proceed immediately to Montreuil's plan- 
tation below the city, where they would be joined by the 
regulars. Commodore Patterson was directed to get 
the gunboat " Carolina " under way. As the Cathedral 
clock was striking three, from every quarter of the city 
troops were seen coming at a quickstep tlirough the 
streets, each company with its own vernacular music, 



226 NEW on LEANS. 

Yankee Doodle, La Marseillaise, Le Chant du Depart. 
The ladies and children crowded the balconies and win- 
dows to wave handkerchiefs and applaud ; the old men 
stood upon the banquettes waving their hats and with 
more sorrow in eyes and heart over their impotence 
than age had ever yet wrung from them. 

Jackson, on horseback, with the regulars drawn up 
at his right, waited at the gate of Fort St. Charles to 
re^'iew the troops as they passed. The artillery 
were already below, in possession of the road. The 
first to march down after them were Beale's rifles, or, 
as New Orleans calls them, Beale's famous rifles, in 
their blue hunting shirts and citizens' hats, their long 
bores over their shoulders, sharp-shooters and picked 
shots every one of them, all young, active, intelligent 
volunteers, from the best in the professional and busi- 
ness circles, asking but one favour, the post of danger. 
At a hand gallop, and with a cloud of dust, came Hinds's 
dragoons, delighting General Jackson by their gallant, 
dare-devil bearing. After them Jackson's companion 
in arms, the great Coffee, trotted at the head of his 
mounted gun-men, with their long hair and unshaved 
faces, in dingy woolen hunting shirts, copperas dyed 
trousers, coonskin caps, and leather belts stuck with 
hunting knives and tomahawks. " Forward at a gallop ! " 
was Coffee's order, after a word with General Jackson, 
and so they disappeared. Through a side street marched 
a gay, varied mass of colour, men all of a size, but some 
mere boys in age, with the handsome, regular features, 
flashing eyes and unmistakable martial bearing of the 
French. "Ah! Here come the brave Creoles," cries 
Jackson, and Plauche's l)attalion, which had come in on 
a run from Bayou St. John, stepped gallantly by. 



NEW OnLEANS. 227 

And after these, under their Avhite commander, defiled 
the Freemen of colour, and then passed down the road 
a band of a hundred Choctaw Indians in their war 
paint ; last of all, the Regulars. Jackson still waited 
until a small dark schooner left the opposite bank of the 
river and slowly moved down the current. This was 
the " Carolina," under Commodore Patterson. Then 
Jackson clapped spurs to his horse, and, followed by 
his aids, galloped after his army. 

The veteran corps took the patrol of the now deserted 
streets. The ladies retired from balcony and window, 
with their brave smiles and fluttering handkerchiefs, 
and, hastening to their respective posts, assembled in 
coteries to prepare lint and bandages, and cut and sew, 
for many of their defenders and Jackson's warriors 
had landed on the levee in a ragged if not destitute 
condition. Before Jackson left Fort St. Charles, a 
message had been sent to him from one of these coteries, 
asking what they were to do in case the city was 
attacked. " Say to the ladies," he replied, " not to be 
uneasy. No British soldier shall ever enter the city as 
an enemy, unless over my dead body." 

As the rumoured war-cry of the British was " Beauty 
and Booty," many of the ladies, besides thimbles and 
needles, had provided themselves with small daggers, 
which they wore in their belts. 

Here it is the custom of local pride to pause and 
enumerate the foes set in array against the men hasten- 
ing down the levee road. 

First, always, there was that model regiment, the 
Ninety-third Highlanders, in their bright tartans and 
kilts, men chosen for stature and strength, whose 
broad breasts, wide shoulders, and stalwart figures, 



228 NEW OBLEANS. 

widened their ranks into a formidable aj)pearance. 
The Prince of Orange and his stalf had jonrneyed 
from London to Plymouth to review them before they 
embarked. Tlien there were six companies of the 
Ninety-fifth Rifles ; the famous Rifle Brigade of the 
Peninsular Campaign ; the Fourteenth Regiment, the 
Duchess of York's Light Dragoons ; two West Lidian 
regiments, with artillery, rocket brigade, sapper and en- 
gineer corps — in all, four thousand three hundred men, 
under command of Major-General John Keane, a young 
officer whose past reputation for daring and gallantry has 
been proudly kept bright by the traditions of his New 
Orleans foes. To these were added General Ross's 
three thousand men, fresh from their brilliant Baltimore 
and Washington raid. Choice troops they were, the 
gallant and distinguished Fourth, or King's Own, the 
Forty-fourth, East Essex Foot, the Eighty-fifth, Buck 
Volunteers, commanded by one of the most brilliant 
officers in the British service. Col. William Thornton ; 
the twenty-first Royal, North British Fusileers, — with 
the exception of the Black Regiments and the High- 
landers, all tried veterans, who had fought with Wel- 
lington through his Peninsular campaign from the 
beginning to his triumphant entry into France. 

Only the first boat loads, eighteen hundred men, were 
in Villere's field on the afternoon of the twenty-third. 
They lay around their bivouac fires, about two hun- 
dred yards from the levee, enjoying their rest and the 
digestion of the bauntiful supper of fresh meat, poul- 
try, milk, eggs, and delicacies, which had been added 
to their rations by a prompt raid on the neighbouring 
plantations. General Keane and Colonel Thornton 
paced the gallery of the Villere house, glancing at each 



NEW ORLEANS, 229 

turn towards the wood, for the sight of the coming of 
the next division of the army. 

The only hostile demonstration during the afternoon 
had been the tiring of the outpost upon a reconnoitering 
squad of dragoons and a bold dash down the road of 
a detachment of Hinds's horsemen, who, after a cool, 
impudent survey of the British camp, had galloped 
away again under a volley from the Rifles. 

Darkness gathered over the scene. The sentinels 
were doubled, and officers walked their rounds in 
watchful anxiety. About seven o'clock some of them 
observed a boat stealing slowly down the river. From 
lier careless approach, they thought she must be one of 
their own cruisers which had passed the forts below 
and was returning from a reconnoissance of the river. 
She answered neither hail nor musket shot, but steered 
steadily on, veering in close ashore until her broadside 
was abreast of the camp. Then 'her anchor was let 
loose, and a loud voice was heard : " Give them this, 
for the honour of America." A flash lighted the dark 
hulk, and a tornado of grape and musket shot swept 
the levee and field. It was the " Carolina " and Com- 
modore Patterson ; volley after volley followed with 
deadly rapidity and precision ; the sudden and terrible 
havoc threw the camp into blind disorder. The men 
ran wildly to and fro, seeking shelter until Thornton 
ordered them to get under cover of the levee. There, 
accordin'g to the British version, they lay for an hour. 
The night was so black that not an object could be dis- 
tinguished at the distance of a yard. The bivouac fires, 
beat about by the enemy's shot, burned red and dull in 
the deserted camp. 

A straggling fire of musketry in the direction of the 



230 NEW ORLEANS. 

pickets gave warning of a closer struggle. It paused 
a few moments, then a fearful yell, and the whole 
heavens seemed ablaze with musketry. The British 
thought themselves surrounded. Two regiments flew 
to support the pickets, another, forming in close column, 
stole to the rear of the encampment and remained there 
as a reserve. After that, all order, all discipline, were 
lost. Each officer, as he succeeded in collecting twenty 
or thirty men about him, plunged into the American 
ranks, and l)egan the hglit that Pakenham reported 
as : "'■ A more extraordinary conflict has, perhaps, never 
occurred, absolutely hand to hand, both officers and 
men." 

Jackson had marshaled his men along the line of a 
plantation canal (the Rodriguez Canal), about two miles 
from the British. He Idmself led the attack on their 
left. Coffee, with the Tennesseeans, Hinds's dragoons, 
and Beale's rifles, skirting along the edge of the swamp, 
made the assault on their right. The broadside from 
the " Carolina " was the signal to start. It was on the 
right that the fiercest lighting was done. Coffee ordered 
his men to be sure of their aim, to fire at a short distance, 
and not to lose a shot. Trained to the rifle from child- 
hood, the Tennesseeans could fire faster and more surely 
than any mere soldier could ever hope to do. Wherever 
they heard the sharp crack of a British rifle, they ad- 
vanced, and the British were as eager to meet them. 
The short rifle of the English service proved also no 
match for the long bore of the Western hunters. When 
they came to close quarters, neither side having bayo- 
nets, they clubbed their guns to tlie ruin of many a fine 
weapon. But the canny Tennesseeans rather than risk 
their rifles, their own property, used for close quarters 



NEW on LEANS. 281 

tlieir long knives and tomahawks, whose skilful han- 
dling they had learned from the Indians. 

The second division of British troops, coming up the 
Bayou, heard the firing, and, pressing forward with all 
speed, arrived in time to reinforce their right ; but the su- 
periority in numbers which this gave them was more than 
offset by the guns of the " Carolina," which maintained 
their fire during the action, and long after it was over. 

A heavy fog, as in Homeric times, obscuring the field 
and the combatants, put an end to the struggle. Jack- 
son withdrew his men to Rodriguez Canal, the British 
fell back to their camp. 

A number of prisoners were made on both sides. 
Among the Americans taken were a liandful of New 
Orleans' most prominent citizens, who were sent to the 
fleet at Ship Island. The most distinguished pris- 
oner made by the Americans was Major Mitchell, of 
the Ninety-fifth Rifles, and to his intense chagrin he 
was forced to yield his sword, not to regulars, but to 
Coffee's uncourtly Tennesseeans. It was this feeling 
that dictated his answer to Jackson's courteous message 
requesting that lie would make knoAvn any requisite 
for his comfort ; " Return my compliments to General 
Jackson, and say that as my baggage will reach me in 
a few days I shall be able to dispense with his })olite 
attentions." The chronicler of the anecdote aptly 
adds, that had the major persisted in this rash deter- 
mination, he would never have been in a condition to 
partake of the hospitalities which were lavished upon 
him during his detention in New Orleans and Natcliez, 
where the prisoners were sent. On his way to Natchez 
he became the guest at a plantation famed for its 
elegance and luxury. At the supper table he met 



232 NEW OBLEANS. 

the daughter of the house, a young Creole girl 
as charming and accomplished as she was heautiful. 
Speaking French fluently, he was soon engaged in a 
lively conversation with her. She mentioned with en- 
thusiasm a party of Tennesseeans entertained by her 
father a few days before. Still smarting from his capt- 
ure, the major could not refrain from saying: "Made- 
moiselle, I am astonished that one so refined could 
And pleasure in the society of such rude barbarians." 
" Major," she replied with glowing face, ^ I had rather 
be the wife of one of those hardy, coarsely clad men 
who have marched two thousand miles to fight for the 
honour of their country, than wear a coronet." 

To return to the battlefield. The Rodriguez Canal, 
with its embankment, formed a pretty good line of 
fortifications in itself. Jackson, without the loss of 
an hour's time, sent to the city for spades and picks, 
and set his army to work deepening the canal and 
strengthening the embankment. For the latter, any 
material within reach was used, timber, fence-rails, 
bales of cotton (which is the origin of the myth that lie 
fought behind ramparts of cotton bales). His men, 
most of them handling a spade for the first and last 
time in their lives, dug as tliey had fought a few hours 
before, every stroke aimed to tell. 

General Jackson established his headquarters in the 
residence of the Macarty plantation, within two liun- 
dred yards of his entrenchments. 

The British passed a miserable night. Not until 
the last fire was extinguished, and the fog completely 
veiled the field, did the " Carolina " cease her firing 
and move to the other side of the river. The men, 
shivering on the damp ground, exposed to the cold, 



NEW ORLEANS. 233 

moist atmospliere, with now none but their scant, half- 
spoiled rations, were depressed and discouraged, and the 
officers were more anxious and uncertain than ever, and 
more completely in error as to the force opposed to them. 
From the intrepidity and boldness of the Americans, 
they imagined that at least five thousand had been in 
the field that night. Other observations strengthened 
this misapprehension ; each volunteer company, with 
its different uniform, represented to military minds so 
many different regiments, a tenfold multiplication of 
the Americans. Besides, in the din of commands, cries, 
and answers, as much French was heard as English. 
The truth began to dawn upon tlie British, that, much 
as the Creoles hated the Americans, they were not 
going to allow a foreign invader to occupy a land 
which they considered theirs by right of original dis- 
covery, occupation, and development, whatever might 
be the flag or form of government over them. 

The dawning of the twenty-fourth disclosed in the 
river another vessel, the " Louisiana," in position near 
the " Carolina," and all day the camp lay helpless under 
their united cannonading. A gloomier Christmastide, 
as our genial chronicler Walker puts it, could hardly 
be imagined for the sons of Merrie England. Had it 
been in the day of tlie cable, they woidd have known 
that their hardships and bloodshed were over, that 
at that very date, the twenty-fourth of December, the 
peace that terminated the war between the two con- 
tending countries was being signed in Ghent. The 
unexpected arrival, however, on Christmas day, of the 
new commander-in-chief, Sir Edward Bakenham, accom- 
panied by a distinguished staff, sent through the hearts 
of the British a thrill of their wonted all-conquering 



234 NEW ORLEANS. 

confidence, and the glad cheers of welcome that greeted 
Sir Edward from his old companions in arms and veter- 
ans of the Peninsula rang over into the American camp. 

Well might Jackson's men, as they heard it, bend 
with more dogged determination over their sj)ades and 
picks. Sir Edward Pakenham was too well known 
in a place so heavily populated from Europe as New 
Orleans was, not to make the thrill of joy in his own 
army a thrill of apprehension in an opposing one. It 
is perhaps from this thrill of apprehension, at that 
moment in their breasts, that dates the pride of the peo- 
ple of New Orleans in Pakenham, and the affectionate 
tribute of liomage which they always interrupt their 
account of the glorious eighth to pay to him. 

The son of the Earl of Longford, he came from a 
family which had been ennobled for its military quali- 
ties. From his lieutenancy he had won every grade by 
some perilous service, and generally at the cost of a 
wound ; few officers, even of that hard-fighting day, 
had encountered so many perils and hardships, and had 
so many wounds to show for them. He had fought 
side by side, with Wellington (who was his brother-in- 
law) through the Peninsular War ; he headed the storm- 
ing party at Badajoz ; actually the second man to mount 
one of the ladders ; and as brigadier of the Old Fight- 
ing Third, under Picton, in the absence by illness of his 
chief, he led the charge at Salamanca, which gained the 
victory for England and won him his knighthood. An 
earldom and the governorship of Louisiana, it is said, 
had been promised him as the reward of his American 
expedition, an expedition which the government had 
at first seriously contemplated confiding to no less a 
leader than the Iron Duke himself. 



NEW ORLEANS. 235 

Sir Edward's practised eye soon took in the difficul- 
ties and embarrassments of the British position. His 
council of war was prolonged far into the night, and 
among the anxiously waiting subalterns outside the 
rumour was whispered that their chief was so dissatisfied 
after receiving Keane's full report that he liad but little 
hope of success, and that he even thought of withdraw- 
ing the army and making a fresh attempt in another 
quarter. But the sturd}^ veteran Sir Alexander Coch- 
rane, would hear of no such word as fail. " If the 
army," he said, "shrinks from the task, I will fetch 
the sailors and marines from the fleet, and with them 
storm the American lines and march to the city. Tlie 
soldiers can then," he added, '"bring up the baggage." 

The result of the council was tlie decision, first, to 
silence tlie " Carolina " and " Louisiana," then to carry 
the American lines by storm. All the large cannon 
that could be spared were ordered from the fleet, and 
by the niglit of the twenty-sixth a powerful battery 
was planted on the levee. The next morning it opened 
fire on the vessels, which answered with broadsides ; a 
furious cannonadincy ensued. Pakenham, standing in 
full view on the levee, cheered his artillerists. Jackson, 
from the dormer window of the Macarty mansion, kept 
his telescope riveted on his boats. The bank of the river 
above and below the American camp was lined with 
spectators watching with breathless interest the tempest 
of cannon balls, bursting shells, hot shot, and rockets 
pouring from levee and gunboats. In half an hour 
the " Carolina " w^as struck, took fire, and blew up. 
The British gave tliree loud cheers. The "" Louisiana " 
strained every nerve to get out of reach of the terrible 
battery now directed full upon her, but with wind and 



236 NEW ORLEANS. 

current against her she seemed destined to the fate 
of the " Carolina," when Iter officers bethought them of 
towing, and so moved her slowly up stream. As she 
dropped her anchors opposite the American camp, her 
crew gave tliree loud cheers, in defiant answer to the 
British. That evening the British army, in two col- 
umns, under Keane and Gibbs, moved forward, the 
former by the levee road, the latter under cover of the 
woods, to Avithin six hundred yards of the American 
lines, where tliey encamped for the night. But there 
was little sleep or rest for them. The American rifle- 
men, with individual enterprise, bushwhacked them 
without intercession, driving in their outposts and 
picking off picket after picket, a mode of warfare 
that the English, fresh from Continental etiquette, 
indignantly branded as barbarous. 

Jackson, with his telescope, had seen from the Ma- 
carty house the line of Pakenham's action, and set to 
work to resist it, giving his aids a busy night's work. 
He strengthened his battery on the levee, added a bat- 
tery to command the road, reinforced his infantry, and 
cut the levee so that the rising river would flood the 
road. The Mississippi })roved recreant, however, and 
fell, instead of rising, and the road remained undamaged. 

The American force now consisted of four thousand 
men and twenty pieces of artillery, not counting the 
always formidable guns of the " Louisiana," command- 
ing the situation from her vantage ground of the river. 
The British columns held eight thousand men. 

The morning was clear and frosty ; the sun, breaking 
through tlie mists, shone with irradiating splendour. 
The British ranks advanced briskly in a new elation 
of spirits after yesterday's success. Keane marched his 



NEW ORLEANS. 237 

column as near the levee as possible, and under screen 
of the buildings of the two plantations, Bienvenu's 
and Chalmette's, intervening between him and the 
American line ; Gibbs hugged the woods on the right. 
The Ninety-fifth extended across the field, in skirmish- 
ing order, meeting Keane's men on their right. Pak- 
enham, with his staff and a guard composed of the 14th 
Dragoons, rode in tlie centre of the line so as to com- 
mand a view of both columns. Just as Keane's column 
})assed the Bienvenu buildings, the Chalmette buildings 
were blown up, and tlien the general saw, through his 
glasses, the mouths of Jackson's large cannon com- 
pletely covering his column, and these guns, as our 
authority states, were manned as guns are not often 
manned on land. Around one of the twenty-four 
pounders stood a band of red-shirted, bewhiskered, 
desperate-looking men, begrimed with smoke and 
nnid ; they were the Baratarians, who had answered 
Jackson's orders by running in all the way from their 
fort on Bayou St. John that morning. The other 
battery was in charge of the practised crew of the 
destroyed "Carolina." Preceded by a shower of rock- 
ets, and covered by the fire from their artillery in 
front and their battery on the levee, the British army 
advanced, solid, cool, steady, beautiful in the rhythm 
of tlieir step and the glitter of their uniforms and 
equi])ments, moving as if on dress parade, — to the 
Americans a display of the beauty and majesty of 
poAver such as they had never seen. 

The orreat gfuns of the Baratarians and of the creAV of 
the " Carolina " and those of the " Louisiana " flashed 
forth almost simultaneously, and all struck full in the 
scarlet ranks. The havoc was terrible. For a time 



238 NEW OBLEANS. 

Keane held his men firm in a vain display of valonr, 
under the pitiless destructive fire, no shot or l)ullet miss- 
ing its aim or falling short. Then the Americans saw 
the heaving columns change to a thin red streak, which 
disappeared from view as under the wand of an en- 
chanter, the men dropping into the ditches, burying 
head and shoulders in the rushes on the banks. Pak- 
enham's face grew dark and gloomy at the sight. Never 
before, it is said, had a British soldier in his presence 
quailed before an enemy or sought cover from a fire. 

Gibbs had fared no better. He who had led the 
storming party against Fort Cornelius, who had scaled 
the parapets of Badajoz and the walls of St. Sebastian, 
could not but despise the low levee and the narrow 
ditch of the American fortifications ; but after one 
ineffectual dash at the enemy's lines, his men could be 
brought to accomplish nothing, remaining inactive in 
the shelter of the woods until ordered to retire. As 
the American batteries continued to sweep the field, the 
British troops could be withdrawn only by breaking 
into small squads and so escaping to the rear. Sir 
Thomas Trowbridge, dashing forward witli a squad of 
seamen to the dismounted guns, succeeded, with incred- 
ible exertion, in tying ropes to them and drawing them 
off. 

The British army remained on the Bienvenu plan- 
tation. Pakenham and his staff rode back to their 
headquarters at Villere's. Another council of war was 
called. Pakenham's depression was now quite evident, 
but the stout-hearted Cochrane again stood indomitably 
firm. He showed that their failure thus far was due to 
the superiority of the American artillery. They must 
supply this deficiency by bringing more large guns from 



NEW ORLEANS. 239 

the fleet, and equip a battery strong enough to cope 
with the few okl guns of the Americans. It was 
suggested that the Americans were intrenched. " So 
must we be," he replied promptly. It was determined, 
therefore, to treat the American lines as regular forti- 
fications, by erecting batteries against them, and so 
attempting to silence their guns. Tliree days were con- 
sumed in the herculean labour of bringing the necessary 
guns from the fleet. While the British were thus em- 
ployed, Commodore Patterson constructed a battery 
on tlie opposite side of the river, equipped it with 
cannon from the " Louisiana " and manned it by an im- 
pressment of every nautical-looking character to be 
found in the sailor boarding-houses of New Orleans, 
gathering together as motley a corps as ever fought 
under one flag, natives of all countries except Great 
Britain, speaking every language except that of their 
commander. 

On the night of the thirty-first, one-half of the 
British army marched silently to within about four 
hundred yards of Jackson's line, where they stacked 
their arms and went to work with spades and picks 
under the superintendence of Sir John Burgoyne. 
The night was dark ; silence was rigidly enforced ; 
officers joined in the work. Before tlie dawn of New 
Year, 1815, there faced the American lines three solid 
demilunes, at nearly equal distances apart, armed with 
thirty pieces of heavy ordnance, furnished with ammu- 
nition for six hours, and served by picked gunners of 
the fleet, veterans of Nelson and Collingswood. As soon 
as their work was completed, the British infantry fell 
back to the rear and awaited anxiously the beginning 
of operations, ready to take advantage of the expected 



240 NEW ORLEANS. 

breach in the American works. The sailors and artil- 
lerists stood with lighted matches behind their redoubts. 
A heavy fog hung over the field, so that neither army 
could see twenty yards ahead. In the American camp, 
a grand parade had been ordered. At an early hour 
the troops were astir, in holiday cleanliness and neat- 
ness. The different bands sounded their bravest 
strains ; the various standards of the regiments and 
companies fluttered gaily in the breeze.^ The liritisli 
had one glance at it, as the fog rolled up, and then 
their cannon crashed through the scene. For a moment 
the American camp trembled, and there was confusion, 
not of panic, but of men rushing to their assigned 
posts. By the time the British smoke cleared every 
man was in his place, and as the British batteries came 
into view their answer was ready for them. Jackson 
strode down the line, stopping at each battery, waving 
his cap as the men cheered him. 

During the fierce cannonade the cotton bales in the 
American breastworks caught fire, and tliere was a 
moment of serious peril to that part of tlie line, but 
they were draggled out and cast into the trench. The 
English were no happier in their use of hogsheads of 
sugar in their redoubts, the cannon balls perforating 
them easily and demolishing them. 

In an hour and a half the British fire began to 
slacken, and as the smoke lifted it was seen that their 
entrenchments were beaten in, the guns exposed, and 
the gunners badly thinned. Not long after their bat- 
teries were completely silenced and their parai)ets 
levelled with the plain. Tlie British battery on the 
levee had, with their hot shot, kept the " Louisiana " at 
a distance, but now the Americans turning their atten- 



NEW ORLEANS. 241 

tion to it, that battery was reduced to the same con- 
dition as the redoubts. 

The English army again retired, baffled, and during 
the night, such of their guns as had not been destroyed 
were removed. The soldiers did not conceal their dis- 
couragement. For two whole days and nights there 
had been no rest in camp, except for those that were 
cool enough to sleep in a shower of cannon balls. From 
the general down to the meanest sentinel, all had 
suffered in the severe strain of fatigue. They saAv 
that they were greatly overmatched in artillery, their 
provisions were scant and coarse, they had, properly 
speaking, no rest at night, and sickness was beginning 
to appear. 

Sir Edward had one more plan, one worthy of his 
bold character. It was to storm the American lines on 
both sides of the river, beginning with the right bank, 
which would enable the British to turn the conquered 
batteries on Jackson's lines, and drive him fr(nn his 
position and cut him off from the city. 

By the 7th of January, with another heroic exertion, 
Villere's Canal was prolonged two miles to the river, 
and the barges to transport the troops to the other 
bank carried through. During the delay a reinforce- 
ment arrived, two fine regiments, Pakenham's own, 
the Seventh Fusileers, and the Forty-third, under 
Major-General John Lambert, also one of Wellington's 
apprentices. Pakenham divided his army, now ten 
thousand strong, into three brigades, under command 
respectively of Generals Lambert, Gibbs, and Keane. 
His plan of attack was simple. Colonel Thornton, 
with fourteen hundred men, was to cross the river 
during the night of the seventh and steal upon and 



242 NEW OB LEANS. 

carry the American line before clay. At a signal to 
be given by him, Gibbs was to storm the American 
left, whilst General Keane should threaten their right ; 
Lambert held the reserve. 

Jackson steadied himself for what he understood to 
be the last round in the encounter. He also had 
received a reinforcement. A few days before, the long 
expected drafted militia of Kentucky, twenty-two hun- 
dred men, arrived, but arrived in a condition that 
made them a questionable addition to his strength. 
Hurried from their homes without supplies, they had 
travelled hfteen hundred miles without demur, under the 
impression that the government would })lentifully fur- 
nish and equip them in New Orleans. Only about a 
third were armed, with old muskets, and nearly all of 
them were in want of clothing. The poor fellows had 
to hold their tattered garments together to hide their 
nakedness as they marched through the streets. The 
government of course did nothing. The citizens, acutely 
moved, raised a sum of sixteen thousand dollars and 
expended it for blankets and woolens. Tlie latter 
were distributed among the ladies, and by them, in a 
few days, made into comfortable garments for their 
needy defenders. 

The American force now amounted to about four 
thousaiid men on the left bank of the river. One 
division of it, the right, was commanded by General 
Ross, the other by General Coffee, whose line extended 
so far in the swamp that his men stood in the water 
during the day and at night slei)t on floating logs 
made fast to trees ; every man '' half a horse and half 
an alligator," as the song says. The artillery and 
the fortifications had been carefully strengthened and 



NEW ORLEANS. 243 

repaired. Another line of defence had been prepared 
a mile and a half in the rear, where were stationed all 
who were not well armed or were regarded as not 
able-bodied. A third line, for another stand in case 
of defeat, still nearer the city, was being vigorously 
worked upon. 

Owing to the caving of the banks of the canal, 
Thornton could get only enough boats launched in the 
river to carry seven hundred of his men across : these 
the current of the Mississippi bore a mile and a half 
below the landing-place selected, and it was daylight 
before they reached there. 

Gibbs and Keane marched their divisions to witliin 
sight of the dark line of the American breastworks, 
and waited impatiently for the signal of Thornton's 
ffuns. Not a sound could be heard from him. In fact 
he had not yet landed his men. Althougli sensible that 
concert of action with the troops on the right bank had 
failed, and that his movement was hopelessly crippled, 
Pakenham, obstinate, gallant, and reckless, would, 
nevertheless, not rescind his first orders. When the 
morning mists lifted, his columns were in motion across 
the field. 

Gibbs was leading his division coolly and steadily 
through the grape-shot pouring upon it, when it began 
to be Avhispered among the men that the Forty-fourth, 
who were detailed for the duty, had not brought the 
ladders and fascines. Pakenham riding to the front 
and finding it Avas true, ordered Colonel Mullen and 
the delinquent regiment back for them. In the con- 
fusion and delay, with his brave men falling all around 
him, the indignant Gibl)s exclaimed furiously : " Let 
me live until to-morrow, and I'll hang him to the high- 



244 NEW ORLEANS. 

est tree in that swamp ! " Rather than stand exposed 
to the terrible lire, he ordered his men forward. " On 
they went," says Walker (who got his description from 
eye-witnesses), "in solid, compact order, the men hur- 
rahing and the rocketers covering their front with a 
blaze of combustibles. The American batteries played 
upon them with awful effect, cutting great lanes 
through the column from front to rear, opening huge 
gaps in their flanks. . . . Still the column advanced 
without pause or recoil, steadily ; tlien all the batteries 
in the American line, including Patterson's marine 
battery on the right bank, joined in hurling a tornado 
of iron missiles into that serried scarlet column, which 
shook and oscillated as if tossed on an angry sea. 
' Stand to your guns ! ' cried Jackson, '• don't waste 
your ammunition, see that every shot tells,' and again, 
' Give it to them, boys ! Let us finish the business to- 
day.' " 

On the summit of the parapet stood the corps of 
Tennessee sharp-shooters, with their rifles sighted, 
and behind them, two lines of Kentuckians to take their 
places so soon as they had fired. The redcoats were 
now within two hundred yards of the ditch. " Fire ! 
Fire ! " Carroll's order rang through the lines. It was 
obeyed, not hurriedly, not excitedly, not confusedly, but 
calmly and deliberately, the men calculating the range 
of their guns. Not a shot was thrown away. Nor 
was it one or several discharges, followed by pauses and 
interruptions ; it was continuous, the men firing, fall- 
ing back and advancing, with mechanical precision. The 
liritish column began to melt away under it like snow 
before a torrent ; but Gibbs still led it on, and the gal- 
lant Peninsula officers, throwing themselves in front, 



NEW ORLEANS. 245 

incited and aroused their men by every appeal and by 
the most brilliant examples of courage. " Where are 
the Forty-fourth," called the men, " with the fascines 
and ladders ? When we get to the ditch we cannot scale 
the lines! " "Here come the Forty-fourth ! " shouted 
Gibbs, "Here come the Forty-fourth! " There came, 
at least, a detachment of the Forty-fourth, with Pak- 
enham himself at the head, rallying and inspiring them, 
invoking their heroism in the past, reminding them of 
their glory in Egypt and elsewhere, calling them his 
countrymen, leading them forward, until they breasted 
the storm of bullets with the rest of the column. At 
this moment Pakenham's arm was struck by one ball, 
liis horse killed by another. He mounted the small 
black Creole pony of his aid, and pressed forward. But 
the column had now reached the physical limit of 
daring. Most of the officers were cut down; there 
were not enough left to command. The column broke. 
Some rushed forward to the ditch ; the rest fell back to 
the swamp. There they rallied, reformed, and throw- 
ing off their knapsacks advanced again, and again were 
beaten back ; their colonel scaling the breastworks and 
falling dead inside the lines. 

Keane, judging the moment had come for him to act, 
now wlieeled his line into column and pushed forward 
with the Ninety-third in front. The gallant, stalwart 
Highlanders, with their heavy, solid, massive front 
of a hundred men, their muskets glittering in the 
morning sun, their tartans waving in the air, strode 
across the field and into the hell of bullets and cannon 
balls. "Hurrah! brave Highlanders!" Pakenham 
cried to them, Avaving his cap in his left hand. Fired 
by their intrepidity, the remnant of Gibbs's brigade 



246 NEW ORLEANS. 

once more came up to the charge, with Pakenham on 
the left and Gibbs on the right. 

A shot from one of the American big guns crashed 
into them, killing and wounding all around. Paken- 
ham's horse fell; he rolled into the arms of an officer 
who sprang forward to receive him; a grape-shot had 
passed through his thigh ; another ball struck him in 
the groin. He was borne to the rear, and in a few 
moments breathed his last under an oak. The bent and 
twisted, venerable old tree still stands, Pakenham's 
oak, it is called. 

Gibbs, desperately wounded, lingered in agony until 
the next day. Keane was carried bleeding off the field. 

There were no field officers now left to command or 
rally. Major Wilkinson however, — we like to remem- 
ber his name, — ■ shouting to his men to follow, passed 
the ditch, climbed up the breastworks, and was raising 
his head and shoulders over the parapet, when a dozen 
guns pointed against him riddled him with bullets. 
His mutilated body was carried through the Ameri- 
can lines, followed by murmurs of sympathy and regret 
from the Tennesseeans and Kentuckians. " Bear up, 
my dear fellow, you are too brave to die," bade a kind- 
hearted Kentucky major. '' I thank you from my 
heart," faintly murmured the young officer ; "it is all 



NEW ORLEANS. 247 

over with me. You can render me a favour. It is to 
communicate to my commander that I fell on your 
parapet, and died like a soldier and true Englishman." 

The British troops at last broke, disorganized, each 
regiment leaving two-thirds dead or wounded on the 
field. The Ninety-third, which had gone into the charge 
nine hundred men strong, mustered after the retreat 
one hundred and thirty-nine. The fight had lasted 
twenty-five minutes. 

Hearing of the death of Pakenham and the wounding 
of Gibbs and Keane, General Laml)ert advanced with 
the reserve. Just before he received his last wound, 
Pakenham had ordered one of liis staff to call up the 
reserve, but as the bugler was about to sound the 
advance, his arm was struck with a. l)all and his bugle 
fell to the ground. The order, therefore, was never 
given, and the reserve marched up only to cover the 
retreat of the two other brigades. 

At eight o'clock the firing ceased from the American 
lines, and Jackson, with his staff, slowly walked along 
his fortifications, stopping at each command to make a 
short address. As he passed, the bands struck up 
" Hail Columbia," and the line of men, turning to face 
him, burst into loud hurrahs. 

But the cries of exultation died away into exclama- 
tions of pity and horror as the smoke ascended from 
the field. A thin, fine red line in the distance, dis- 
covered by glasses, indicated the position of General 
Lambert and the reserve. Upon the field, save the 
crawling, agonizing wounded, not a living foe was to 
be seen. From the American ditch, one could have 
walked a quarter of a mile on the killed and disabled. 
The course of the column could be distinctly traced 



248 NEW ORLEANS. 

by the broad red line of uniforms upon the ground. 
They fell in their tracks, in some places wliole platoons 
together. Dressed in their gay uniforms, cleanly 
shaved and attired for the promised victory, there was 
not, as Walker saj^s, a private among the slain whose 
aspect did not present more of the pomp and cir- 
cumstance of war than any of the commanders of their 
victors. 

About noon, a British officer, with a trumpeter and a 
soldier bearing a white flag, approached the camp, bear- 
ing a written proposition for an armistice to bury the 
dead. It was signed "Lambert." General Jackson 
returned it, with a message that the signer of the letter 
had forgotten to designate his authority and rank, 
which was necessary before any negotiations could be 
entered into. The flag of truce retired to the British 
lines, and soon returned with the full signature, "John 
Lambert, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces." 

On the right bank of the river it was the British 
who were victorious. The Americans, yielding to 
panic, fled disgracefully, as people with shame relate 
to this day. It was on this side of the river that the 
British acquired the small flag which hangs among the 
trophies of the Peninsular War, in Whitehall, with 
the inscription : " Taken at the battle of New Orleans, 
January 8, 1815." 

The l:)odies of the officers were first delivered. Some 
of them were buried that night in Villere's garden by 
torch-light; the rest were hastily interred in the rear 
of Bienvenu's plantation ; the remains of Gibbs and 
Pakenham were conveyed to England. Of the six 
thousand men who made the attack on Jackson's lines, 
the British report a loss of nineteen hundred and 



NEW OB LEANS. 249 

twenty-nine. The American estimates increase this to 
two thousand six hundred. The x^tmericans had eight 
men killed and thirteen wounded. 

The prisoners and wounded were sent to the city. 
Some of the little boys of the time, now in their nine- 
ties, who watched the slow, sad cortege, tell of their 
childish pity and sympathy for them, and their admi- 
ration for the great, tall, handsome prisoners, in their 
fine uniforms. 

The citizens pressed forward to tender their aid for 
the wounded. The hospitals being crowded, j)rivate 
houses were thrown open, and the quadroon nurses, the 
noted quadroon nurses of the city, offered their ser- 
vices and gave their best skill and care at the bedside 
of the English sufferers. 

As soon as the armistice expired, the American bat- 
teries resumed their firing. Colonel Thornton with 
his men recrossed the river during the night of the 
eighth. From the ninth to the eighteenth a small 
squadron of the British fleet made an ineffectual at- 
tempt to pass Fort St. Philip. Had it timed its action 
better with Pakenham's, his defeat might at least have 
cost his enemies dearer. 

On the 18th of January took jAace the exchange of 
prisoners, and New Orleans received again her sorely 
missed citizens. Although their detention from the 
stirring scenes of the camp formed in their lives oue 
of the unforgivable offences of destiny, their courteous, 
kindly, pleasant treatment by the British naval officers 
was one of the reminiscences which gilded the memo- 
ries of the period. 

Sir John Lambert's retreat was the ablest measure 
of the British campaign. To retire in boats was im- 



250 NEW ORLEANS. 

practicable ; there were not boats enough, and it was 
not safe to divide the army. A road was therefore 
opened, along the bank of the bayou, across the prairie to 
the lake, a severe and difficult task that occupied nine 
days. All the wounded, except those who could not 
be removed, the field artillery and stores, were placed 
in barges and conveyed to the fleet, the ship guns were 
spiked, and on the night of the eighteenth the army 
was stealthily and quietly formed into column. The 
camp-fires were lighted as usual, the sentinels posted, 
each one provided with a stuffed dummy to put in his 
stead when the time came for him to join the march 
in the rear of the column. They marched all night, 
reaching the shores of Lake Borgne at break of day. 

Early in the morning of the nineteenth, rumourc of the 
retreat of the English began to circulate in the Ameri- 
can camp. Officers and men collected in groups on 
the parapet to survey the British camp. It presented 
pretty much the same api)earance as usual, with its 
huts, flags, and sentinels. General Jackson, looking 
through his telescope from Macarty's window, coul I 
not convince himself that the enemy had gone. At 
last General Humbert, one of Napoleon's veterans, was 
called upon for his opinion. He took a look througli 
the telescope, and immediately exclaimed : "They are 
gone ! " When asked the reason for his belief, he 
pointed to a crow flying very near one of the sentinels. 

While a reconnoitering party was being formed, a 
flag of truce approached. It brought a courteous letter 
from General Lambert, announcing the departure of the 
British army, and soliciting the kind attentions of Gen- 
eral Jackson to the sick and wounded, whom he was 
compelled to leave behind. The circumstances of these 



NEW ORLEANS. 



251 



wounded men being made known in the city, a number 
of ladies drove immediately down the coast in their 
carriages with articles for their comfort. 

The British fleet left the Gulf shores on the ITth 
of March. When it reached England, it received the 
news that Napoleon had escaped and that Europe was 
up again in arms. Most of the troops were at once 
re-embarked for Belgium, to join Wellington's army, 
(leneral Lambert, knighted for gallantry at New Or- 
leans, distinguished himself at Waterloo. 

A handsome tablet in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, 
commemorates Pakenham's gallant life and heroic 
death. 

Walker relates that the Duke of Wellington, after, 
the battle of New Orleans, always cherished a great 
admiration for General Jackson, and when introduced 
to American visitors never failed to inquire after his 
health. 




k 







CHAPTER XII. 



JACKSON entered the city tlie 20th of January ; 
on the twenty-third was celebrated the public 
thanksgiving for the victory. This was the proudest 
and happiest day in the life of the city. A salute of 
artillery greeted its sunrise, a sunrise as radiant as the 
one that ushered in the day of the victory. 

In the Place d' Amies — would that Bienville and 
his Canadians might have seen it ! — arose a great 
triumphal arch, supported on six Corinthian pillars 
festooned with evergreens and flowers, its entrance 
guarded by Liberty and Justice, in the blooming forms 
of two beautiful young girls. Beside t]iem, posed on 
pedestals, two cherubs, or children, held outstretched a 
laurel wreath. From the arch to the cathedral stood 
facing one another the states and territories, tlie loveli- 
est young ladies of the city, dressed in white, with blue 
veils fastened by silver stars on their brows, each one 
holding in one hand a banner emblazoned with her 
national title, in the other a basket tied with blue 
ribbon, Hlled with flowers. Behind each a lance stuck 
in the ground bore a shield with the motto and seal 

252 



NEW ORLEANS. 253 

of the state or territory represented, and the lances 
were festooned tog-ether with garlands of flowers and 
evergreens, extending over the street to the wreathed 
and decorated door of the cathedral. 

The crowd gathers nntil every place is packed. As 
the cathedral clock strikes the hour appointed, General 
Jackson, followed by his staff, appears at the river gate 
of the square. Salvos of artillery, bursts of music, and 
wild huzzas greet him ; lie crosses the square and 
mounts the steps of the triumphal arch. At the en- 
trance, he is arrested, while the cherubs, with blushing 
faces and timid hands, place the laurel wreath upon his 
head ; and wilder acclamations from the crowd drown 
the music, as it would have drowned the artillery had 
it continued. So crowned, tlie hero passes through 
the arch, and is met, not by V^enus, but by Louisiana, 
dazzlingly radiant in all her youth, beauty, and Creole 
grace and charm. She recites a speech as glowing as 
herself with gratitude and emotion, to which the gen- 
eral replies with no less emotion, that his merits have 
been exalted far above their worth. As he descends 
the steps and proceeds down the path to the cathe- 
dral, the states and territories shower their flowers 
through the air, and the ground blossoms under his 
feet. At the cathedral door stands the Abbe Dubourg 
in full pontificals, at the head of his priests. He also 
addresses a speech to Jackson, praising him for the vic- 
tory, but solemnly reminding him of the Giver of all 
victories, to which again Jackson replies modestly and 
humbly. He is led through the crowded church to 
a seat of honour before the brilliant high altar, the 
gallant Battalion d'Orleans, in full uniform, files into 
the aisles, the majestic Te Deum rises from organ and 



254 NEW ORLEANS. 

choir. At night the whole city is illuminated, and 
balls and festivities hold the hours until dawn. 

The celebration, however, ended not with that day; 
the victory seemed only to have begun in New Orleans. 
For half a century afterwards the city appeared ever on 
a passage through triumj^hal arches, with states and ter- 
ritories throwing flowers in her path. There was no 
discussion thereafter over the question of her eligibility 
to a place in the Union, nor of the political equality of 
lier citizens with the Americans. Year after year trav- 
ellers from all over the continent and from Europe 
came to view the spot where the conquerors of Napo- 
leon had been conquered, and to meet the heroes who 
had accomplished it. The glorious 8th of January 
eclipsed every other fete day in the city ; its annual 
parade is one of the groat memories of the happy child- 
hood before the civil war. Not a negTO nurse but, 
with face as bright as her Madras kerchief, could name 
the heroes of the Battalion d'Orleans as it passed, and 
tell of the great battle they had won, always linking 
in the company of the freemen of colour, with the 
heroism and patriotism of the whites. They were all 
Hectors and Achilleses to the proud children! And 
Jordan — but no one, not even the grand officers nor 
grander visitors in the parade, ever lired the childish 
heart so much as he — the young mulatto drummer, 
who beat his drum during all and every fight, in the 
hottest hell of the fire, and was complimented by 
Jackson himself after the battle. Long after the civil 
war, childhood can remember " Old Jordan ' as he was 
then called, an aged mulatto in uniform, l)eating his old 
Chalmette drum in the parade, at the head of the white- 
haired, bent-backed, feebly-stepping veterans of 1812. 



NEW ORLEANS. 257 

Even prosperity fails to obliterate such memories ! 
And the prosperity that gilded the prophetic vision of 
Law now showered upon the city, — just one century 
too late for Law and for the city's royal godfather. 
Statistics alone are the proper chroniclers of it. From 
eight thousand at the time of the cession, the popula- 
tion of the city arose to thirty-three thousand the year 
after the battle ; by 1819 it was forty-one thousand, 
ten years later fifty thousand, in 1840, one hundred 
thousand, and New Orleans ranked fourth in the Union, 
New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore alone outnum- 
bering her. In 1812 the first steamboat came down 
the river to the city ; in 1821 there were two hundred 
and eighty-seven arrivals of steamboats. The year 
after the battle the harbour was white with sails, and 
fifteen hundred flatboats and five hundred barges tied 
up at their landing. As many as six thousand flat- 
boatmen at a time trooped in the streets. The city 
walls were thrown down, the forts demolished, the 
moat was filled and made into boulevards : Canal, Ram- 
part, and Esplanade. The old Marquis de Marigny 
turned his plantation into blocks and streets : Love, 
Greatmen, Good Children, Piety, with a few fixed 
names, Mandeville, Marigny, Kerlerec, Champs Elysees, 
Enghien. This section of the city is still called by 
the old-fashioned, Faubourg Marigny, or the " third " 
municipality. 

The landing for flatboats and barges had been 
located by the Spanish government outside the city 
walls, along the willow-grown bank in front of the 
Tchoupitoulas road, which fixed it as the quarter 
for American settlement. This was in front of the old 
Jesuits' plantation, extending from the Terre Commune, 



258 NEW ORLEANS. 

or government reservation, outside the walls, to the 
line marked by Delord street, which was then owned 
by Bertrand and Marie Gravier. In the business 
reaction after the great conflagration of Miro's time, 
they divided their tract of land into lots and streets, 
and found ready investors in it. It was called Ville 
Gravier, until Jean Gravier changed it to Faubourg Ste. 
Marie, in honour of his mother. The Tchoupitoulas 
road became Tchoupitoulas street. The government 
storehouses for Kentucky tobacco, just outside the 
Terre Commune, gave Magazine street its Spanish 
name, Calle del Almazen. The Campo de Negros, or 
Negro Camp, named Camp street, beyond which, stretch- 
ing out to the swamp, were the truck gardens that sup- 
plied the markets. The first street crossing the Fau- 
bourg Ste. Marie was Gravier street, running into the 
swamp. At the end of it, about the rear of the Poy- 
dras market, stood tlie old plantation house and home 
of Jean Gravier. Poydras, Girod, and Julia, a free 
coloured woman, named the streets which delined their 
investments on the river front. The Terre Commune 
became Common street ; the Faubourg Ste. Marie be- 
came the second municipality of the city, and, ever 
attracting the American settlers, it stretched upwards, 
taking in, one after another, the old historic plantations. 
The electric car of to-day speeds through the cane- 
fields, negro quarters, gardens, parks, and pastures of 
these old plantations. Every now and then, in the 
Garden District, the eye lights U2)on a venerable oak or 
a great solitary pecan tree, which stands amid the spick 
and span improvements about it, tlie last of a great 
grove or avenue of a century ago. The Garden District 
proper covers the old De Bore plantation, which had 



NEW Oil LEANS. 



259 



been the property of the patriot jNIasan, condeniDed by 
O'Reilly to ten years' imprisonment in Moro Castle, 













Havana. It was the first place in the state upon which 
sugar was made, and, the childhood home of Charles 



260 NEW ORLEANS. • 

Gayarre, it was that " Louisiana sugar plantation 
under the old regime " of which he has written so 
charmingly and to which he loved, in his old, old age, 
to take his friends in conversation. There was not one 
of his intimates but could, with easy imagination, sub- 
stitute personal for oral knowledge of it; the avenue 
of pecan trees that lead from the high road to the great 
moat, alive with fish, with on its farther bank a thick 
hedge of yucca, or Spanish dagger, — a transcendent 
sight in the spring, when every staff bore its spike 
of ethereally beautiful waxen white flowers, swinging 
and swaying in the breeze ; the grass-covered rampart 
crowned by its formidable brick wall ; with its hedge 
inside of wild orange ; the avenue to the house, shaded 
with sweet orange trees, also in spring and autumn 
redolent and beautiful beyond description ; and the 
house itself, — a veritable treasure-house of anecdotes, 
historical and convivial, with its archetypal master 
and Louisiana planter, M. de Bord, whom we, see as 
his grandson loved to picture him, in the dawn at 
the beginning of the day's work, and at the afternoon 
close of it, with his slaves kneeling to their j^rayers 
before him. 

Lidigo was the staple and profitable product of the 
Louisiana plantations until a worm made its appear- 
ance and destroyed crop after crop. Ruin stared the 
planters in the face. Cane grew as well as indigo in 
the soil, but all efforts to make sugar out of it had 
failed. The syrup would not granulate, and at last 
popular belief would have it, that syrup made from 
cane grown in Louisiana soil could not granulate. It 
was a sort of popular reasoning that has spurred 
many a sensible man to a successful experiment. De 



NEW ORLEANS. 261 

Bore invested his and his wife's fortune in seed cane; 
planted, prepared his mill, and engaged Cuban sugar- 
makers. The day of the roulaison a crowd of planters 
gathered in his sugar-house, standing along the side of 
the kettles, turning their eyes from the boiling juice to 
the sugar-maker, with the strained interest of players 
looking from the cards to the dealer, at a rouge-et-7ioir 
table. Would it granulate ? would it not granulate ? 
The sugar-maker tested — tested ; " Not." " Not." " It 
granulates ! " at last he called in triumphant voice. It 
was, to the colonists, as if the gold mines hoped for by 
La Salle had been found. 

Of M. de Bore's wife, a Des Trehans, daughter of 
the Royal Treasurer and a pupil of St. Cyr, old beaux 
of her day used to say that it was worth a fifty -mile 
journey merely to see her take a pinch of snuff. 

The plantation above, which extended over Audubon 
Park, belonged to Pierre Foucher, a son-in-law of M. 
de Bore; the next place above, taking in Carrollton, 
had belonged to the unfortunate Lafr^niere ; it was at 
that time the property of Mademoiselle de Macarty, 
who was Madame de Bore's intimate friend as well as 
neighbour, and, like her, had been educated at Madame 
de Maintenon's institution for the proper education of 
proper young ladies. It certainly was worth travelling 
fifty miles to hear Mademoiselle de Macarty described 
by the nonagenarian historian and see one of her visits 
to his grandmother acted. Her carriage, a curiosity 
unique in the colony, was called a chaise ; it was like a 
modern coupe, but smaller, with sides and front of glass. 
There was no coachman; a postilion rode one of the 
spirited horses, a little black rascal of a postilion, who 
always rode so fast and so wildly that his tiny cape 



262 NEW OBLEANS. 

stood straight out behind like wings. When, in a cloud 
of dust, the vehicle turned into the Pecan avenue, the 
little darkeys stationed there as lookouts would shriek 
out in shrill excitement, to get the announcement to the 
great gates ahead of the horses: " Mamzelle Macarty a 
pe vini! " And there would be a rush inside, to throw 
the gates open in time. And his cape flying more wildly 
than ever, his elbows beating the air more furiously, the 
postilion would gallop his horses in a sweeping circle 
through the great courtyard and bring them panting 
to a brilliant ^na?e before the carriage step. M. de Bore 
would be standing there, ready, with his lowest bow, to 
open the carriage door and hand the fair one out, and 
lead her at arm's length, with a stately minuet step, 
up the broad brick stairs and through the hall, to the 
door of the salon, where they would face each other, and 
he would again bow, and she would drop a curtsey into 
the very hem of her gown — lier Louis XIV. gown, for 
from head to foot she always dressed in an exact copy 
of the costume of Madame de jNIaintenon. That is, all 
to her arms, which were in Mademoiselle de Macarty's 
youth so extremely beautiful that she never overcame 
the habit, even in extreme cold weather and old age, of 
exhibiting them bare to the shoulder. The mystery 
why, with her great wealth and great beauty, she had 
never married, remained a vivid one — even when old 
age had effaced everything except the fame of her radi- 
ant youth. 

The De Bore town house was on Chartres and Conti 
streets, a massive In-ick building, with a large courtyard 
opening on Conti street, a true Spanish 1)uilding ; broad 
doorways, windows, rooms, liall, a staircase fit for a 
palace and beautiful enough for one, with its elaborate, 



NEW OBLEANS. ^ 263 

fantastic, handwrouglit iron railing ; tlie roof was a 
solid terrace, surrounded by a stone balustrade. It 
was afterwards owned by Madame de la Chaise. The 
Des Trehans hotel stood opposite. Both have been 
demolished to make room for business buildings. But 
the house of Madame Poree, another member of the 
same family, still stands on the corner of Dumaine and 
Royal streets, looking just as it did on the brilliant 
December day when the little Charles Gayarre saw its 
iron-balustraded balcony lilled with ladies, waving their 
handkerchiefs to the Creole troops hurrying down to 
the plains of Chalmette; or when, on the 8th of Jan- 
uary, the roar of the cannon subsiding, hearts were 
beating every instant more fearfidly and anxiously, 
the clatter of horses' feet was heard and women and 
children rushing out upon it as they did upon all tlie 
balconies around, — ''Victory! Victory!" was shouted 
to them by a young Creole galloping through the 
streets. 

The old Spanish building opposite the side of the 
Cabildo, on St. Peter and Chartres streets, was, at this 
time, the restaurant " La veau qui tete,'' famed for its 
wine and cooking and its patronage by the elife. Be- 
low, on Chartres, between Dumaine and St. Philip, was 
the old Cafe des Emigres, the headquarters for the 
St. Domingans, where tlieir favourite liquor, " le petit 
gouave," was concocted. 

In passing along the streets to-day in the French quar- 
ter, one can understand with a sigh of regret, the easy 
sociability which then made the whole beau monde one 
and a congenial set, the ideal of all society and an im- 
possible one now, with the accumulation of population, 
the great separation of distances, and the segregative 



264 NEW ORLEANS. 

rules of neighbourhood. In the gay season then the 
whole city was one neighbourhood, what one really could 
call a neighbourhood, courtyard doors all open, balcony 
touching balcony, terrace looking on to terrace. So( iety 
was close, contiguous, contiguous. There were no sum- 
mer trips then beyond the atmosphere of Louisiana, 
none of the periodical separations which, year after 
year, like the effective dropping of water ujDoa u stone, 
break through the union of families and friends, non 
vi sed saep^ cadendo. Then, when after the voyage de 
rigueur to France, not one year, but a series of years, 
held families fixed in the same place, with the same 
surroundings, in touch with the same affections and 
interests, friendship became a habit and an inheritance 
in what are called the old families (and so distinguish- 
ing them from tlie new ones), as can be shown by many 
an heir, to this day, among blacks as well as whites. 
In spite of epidemics, summer was then so far away from 
the disfavour of to-day that in the accounts that come 
to us, it seems as attractive as winter; the early ris- 
ing and morning cup of coffee ; the great courtyard, 
stretched open for all the breezes and all the world that 
choose to enter ; the figs, pomegranates, bananas, crape 
myrtles and oleanders, glittering in their dew; the 
calls in the street, musical negro cries, heralding vege- 
tables, fruits, and sweets :. " Belle des figues! " " Belle 
des figues!" "Bons petits calasi" "Tout chauds! 
Tout chauds! " "Barataria! Baratarial " "Confitures 
30co!" "Pralines, Pistache! Pralines, Pacanes, " the 
family marchande, coming into the courtyard swaying 
her body on her hips to balance the basket on her head, 
sitting on the steps to give the morning news to the 
family sitting around the breakfast-table on the gal- 



NEW ORLEANS. 265 

leiy; the dining-room on the rez de chaussee and open- 
ing into the street for all passers-by to see, if they 
would, the great family board (there Avere no small 
families in the ancient regime), and the pompons but- ' 

ler and the assistant "gardienne," in bright head- 
kerchief, gold-hook earrings, white fichu, and gay 
flowered gown ; the promenade after dinner, on the 
tree-shaded levee, to enjoy the evening breezy and 
meet with every one one knew . . . and see the con- 
stant wonder of new ships arriving ... at night the 
chairs on terraces and balconies brought close to boun- 
dary lines, for the ladies to exchange those confidences 
which keep family secrets from dying out, while the 
men, as the phrase was, are enjoying themselves. . . . 
These were features of the summer life in the city in 
those days. 

The travellers of that time in the United States, the 
European ones, especially, liked the place, and were 
fond of comparing it with the cities of the North. The 
Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Eisenach, who visited New 
Orleans, in 1825-26, publishes quite frankly: "It was 
naturally agreeable to me, after wandering a long time 
in mere wilderness, once more to come into a long civ- 
ilized country." He landed at Bayou St. John, and 
finding that a boat to the city would cost six dollars^ 
he walked in. After three miles, " We found ourselves 
quite in another world, plantations with handsome 
buildings, followed in quick succession, noble live-oaks, 
orange trees, mansions with columns, piazzas and cov- '5(f) 

ered galleries. . . . We saw from a distance the white 
spires of the cathedral and masts in port . . . passed 
the canal upon a turning bridge to strike into the city 
by a nearer way . . . the road led between well-built 



266 NEW ORLEANS. 

mansions ; over the streets were hung reflecting lamps. 
. . . Ships hiy four or five deep in tiers along the 
river. In a line with the bank stood houses two or 
three stories high, also ancient mansion houses known 
by their heavy, solid style." 

The Duke visited Mr. Grymes (who had married the 
beautiful widow of Governor Claiborne). They lived, 
he says, in a large massive and splendidly furnished 
house, and they made a great display at a dinner party 
given him. " After the second course, large folding 
doors opened and we beheld another dining-room in 
which stood a table with the dessert, at which we seated 
ourselves in the same order as at the first." 

The Duke made up his mind to pass the season in 
the city. " No day passed over this winter," he writes, 
" which did not produce something pleasant and inter- 
esting . . . dinners, evening parties, masquerades and 
other amusements followed close on each other." 
" There were masked balls every night of the Carnival 
at the French theatre, which had a handsome saloon, 
well ornamented with mirrors, with three rows of 
seats arranged en amphithedtre. Tuesdays and Fridays 
were the nights for the subscription balls, wliere none 
but good society were admitted. The ladies are very 
pretty, with a genteel French air, their dress, extremely 
elegant, after the latest Paris fashion ; they dance 
excellently. Two cotillions and a Avaltz were danced 
in quick succession ; the musicians were coloured and 
pretty good. The gentlemen, who were far behind the 
ladies in elegance, did not long remain, but hastened 
away to other balls, and so, many of the ladies were 
condemned to 'make tapestry.' . . . On Sundays, 
shops were open and singing and guitar playing in the 



NEW ORLEANS. 267 

streets, for which in New York or Philadelphia one 
would be put in prison." . . . 

He goes to the coffee-houses to hear Spanish songs 
with guitar accompaniment, and to the theatre regularly, 
both to the French and American. At the former, 
among other dramatic performances, he saw " Marie 
Stuart " played in masterly style to an enthusiastic 
audience, in which the Columbian commander in port 
was a conspicuous figure, with his brilliant uniform 
and hat with long white feather ; he also met an old 
friend, the Comte de Vidua, there. At the American 
theatre he saw " Der Freischiitz," the " Kentuckians " 
cracking nuts during the performance. . . . On 
Mardi-Gras all the ball-rooms of the city were opened. 
There was a grand masked ball at the Theatre d'Or- 
leans. . . . jVIany of the ladies were in mask, but 
curiosity soon led his Highness elsewhere. On the 
22d of February there was a splendid ball again at 
the Theatre d'Orleans . . . and there is mention of a 
children's ball for the benefit of the dancing master, 
in which the little ones gave proof of their inherited 
beauty and grace. The taste and splendour in the 
mansion of the Baron de Marigny are especially com- 
mented upon, and the coffee-set sent by the Duke of 
Orleans, the cups ornamented with portraits of the 
royal family, the larger pieces with views of the Palais 
Royal, and castle and park at Neuilly. It was with 
the Marigny ladies that the Duke went to see the 
" Cosmorama," and returning from accompanying them 
home, saw the prettiest picture he has penned in his 
book: "It was eight o'clock as we descended the levee, 
the evening was clear, with starlight, the bustle in the 
liarl)our had ceased, one only remarked on board of some 



268 NEW ORLEANS. 

ships the sailors collected on deck under an illumi- 
nated awning where the captain held evening service. 
Precisely at eight o'clock the retreat gun fired at the 
city hall . . . innnediately afterwards the two Colum- 
bian brigs fired; their drums and bugles sounded re- 
treat, while those in the barracks did the same. All 
this, added to the lighted ships and the solitary gleams 
from the opposite side of the river, made an impression 
upon me which I cannot describe." 

After a stay of nine weeks he left New Orleans, 
" with the most grateful feelings towards the inhabi- 
tants, who liad received me in a friendly and affectionate 
manner, and had made this winter so extremely agree- 
able to me. . . . The Creoles are, upon the whole, a 
warm-hearted generation ; the people with whom I was 
least pleased here were the Americans, who are mostly 
brought here by the desire of accumulating wealth." 

In 1824, the illustrious Lafayette paid his historical 
visit to the city, and was accorded a reception and 
triumphal arch, which almost vies in memory with the 
glorious triumph of Jackson. 

It was a hare and tortoise race between the Ameri- 
cans and the Creoles, and in the United States it is 
always the hare that wins. Before the Creoles were 
aware of it, the Faubourg Ste. Marie was not only a 
commercial rival of the vieu.c carre, but was proving 
a close competitor over her undisputed birthright, the 
expression of the religious and social life of the place ; 
claiming separate churches, cemeteries, fine residences, 
and theatres. In 1805, as soon as the cession granted 
them freedom of worship, the Americans built a Protes- 
tant Episcopal church, Christ Church, on the outskirts 
of the city, the corner of Canal and Dauphine streets. 



NEIV ORLEANS. 



269 



Governor Claiborne worshipped in it, and, after liis 
death, received a marble memorial in its churchyard. 
A truly venerable Gothic building it was, and so tilled 




with memories and encased in sentiment, that when its 
vestry, after three-quarters of a century's resistance 
to enterprise, finally sold it and its churchyard, to 



270 NEW ORLEANS. 

remove into a more progressive and American part 
of town, the old residents, Catholics as well as Protes- 
tants, shed tears ; and it is only the great American 
compeller — financial necessity — that can, even to-day, 
secnre any popular submission to the demolition of the 
first Protestant landmark in the community. 

1823 is the illustrious date that begins all English 
theatrical memories in the city, when the Americans 
opened their theatre on Camp street, between Poydras 
and Gravier. The new enterprise offered all-year-round, 
legitimate drama, with a fine stock company of English 
players, and such regular annual luminaries as the elder 
Booths, Macready, Forrest, Barrett, the Placides, and 
above all, there was that incomparable owner and man- 
ager, accomplished English scholar, actor, reader, gen- 
tleman, bon vivant, Caldwell, whose suppers, bon mots, 
readings, criticisms, repartees, are a regular part of the 
make-up of any pretender to dramatic criticism of to- 
day. It was the convivial contact with such a stage, 
such a company, such actors, and such a Caldwell, that 
fostered the pleasant illusion which lasted so long 
among the gentlemen of New Orleans, that upon the 
drama and acting, they spoke ex cathedra. And even 
now, in the " old families," the heritage of obiter dicta 
from the " old Varieties " are given and taken as argu- 
ments of current exchange. Even the old slaves, the 
most enthusiastic of theatre-goers, by frequenting the 
Camp Street, and afterwards the St. Charles Street 
theatre, felt themselves authorized to laugh any modern 
theatrical pretensions to scorn, and the barbers and 
hairdressers of the old time made Shakespearian criti- 
cism and theatrical gossip a regular part of their collo- 
quial accomplishment. 



NEW ORLEANS. 271 

But, with all her enterprise, Faubourg Ste, Marie 
was outvoted by the city below Canal street, which 
ahvays elected the mayor and the majority of the coun- 
cil. The consequence was tliat the revenues of the 
city were all expended upon improvements in the Cre- 
ole section, and every effort of nepotism was made by 
the city government to assure its superiority over its 
upstart rival ; besides its Canal Carondelet, a railroad 
was given it in 1825, to connect it with the lake trade ; 
the Pontchartrain railroad, noted as the second one 
built in the United States. 

Faubourg Ste. Marie retaliated by constructing its 
own canal, which brought the lake trade to the foot of 
Julia street. The rivalry between the two sections was 
noAv inflamed to antagonism. In the midst of it the 
country members of the legislature, jealous of the pre- 
pondering influence of the city on its body, removed 
the capital to Donaldsonville, a small town on the Mis- 
sissippi. It was, however, transferred again to New 
Orleans in 1831, when the property holders of Faubourg 
Ste. Marie, after a most exciting struggle, forced 
through the legislature an amendment to the city 
charter, dividing the city into three municipalities, 
with Canal street and the Esplanade as boundary lines, 
and giving each section a separate government — in 
reality making three separate cities of it. The con- 
troller of its own finances, the Faubourg Ste. Marie, in 
one dash, left its Creole rival so far behind in the race as 
to settle the contest forever. Streets were paved, ware- 
houses built, quays constructed, and blocks filled with 
residences. The truck gardens were shoved into the 
swamp. An unsightly quagmire was filled in to fur- 
nish the site for a palatial hotel, the St. Charles ; two 



272 NSW ORLEANS. 

other hotels were built, on the ground of the old cattle 
pens on Camp and Magazine streets. A wretched waste 
was converted into Lafayette Square; the City Hall, 
First Presbyterian Church, Odd Fellows Hall, were 
grouped with fine effect around it. Banks, newspapers, 
railroad companies, warehouses, compresses, multiplied; 
commercial firms sprang up like mushrooms ; property 
rose by leaps in value. 

The Faubourg Marigny built also her compresses, 
warehouses, quays, and blocks of residences, these last 
with more architectural generosity, broader spaces, 
longer vistas, ampler gardens, than Faubourg Ste. 
Marie, with more sacrifices to the picturesque, and 
therefore not with the same resultant accumulation of 
wealth. 

The vieux carre built, too, her St. Louis Hotel, with 
a great exchange, under a magnificent rotunda. A jail, 
the " Calaboose," strong as a Bastile, was erected back 
of the town near Congo Square. Banks and business 
rows, and finer and finer houses, crowded out the old 
Spanish structures, which the Creoles, unlike the thrifty 
Americans, filled with finer furniture, mirrors, pictures, 
from Europe. The enriched Americans now buy it 
second-hand for their fine houses ; the Creoles selling 
it — some of them for bread. Secure in the prolific 
wealth of their plantations and city rents, the enter- 
prise of the Creoles, in inverse progression from the 
Americans, seemed applied rather to the dispensing 
than to the acquiring of wealth. 

Travellers came to visit tlie 1830 " Chicago " and 
wrote all kinds of flattering things of it. The English 
traveller, Buckingham, who was in the city in 1839, 
says that below Canal street everything reminded him 



NEW ORLEANS. 27S 

of Paris: tlie lamps hanging from ropes across the 
streets, the women in gay aprons and caps, the language, 
the shops, particularly the millinery establishment on 
Royal and Toulouse streets, " La Belle Creole," with 
its beautiful oil-painted sign, representing a lady in 
costu7ne de hal and another in costume de promenade ; the 
winning persuasiveness of the shop-keepers; the style of 
living; the love of military display, and the amusements, 
operas, concerts, ballets, balls and masquerades, without 
intermission, from November to May ; persons coming 
from theatres at midnight, remaining at masquerades 
until daylight. The ball-rooms of tlie St. Louis hotel 
were, he said, unequalled in the L^nited States for size 
and beauty. The banks were "noble buildings." The 
St. Charles hotel he pronounced not only the hand- 
somest in the United States, but in the world, even the 
handsomest of London and Paris falling short of it. 
Li his enumeration he specially pauses at the wonder of 
the city, the magnificent chandelier of the newly built 
St. Charles theatre, made especially in London, thirty- 
six feet in diameter, with hundreds of gas jets and 
thousands of cut-glass drops. Our traveller found the 
Creoles " frank, warm-hearted and impassioned, with 
manners more interesting than the Americans . . . 
the roundness and beauty of shape in the women also 
contrasting with the straightness and angularity of 
American figures ; in complexion they are like Italian 
women, and they combine the attractiveness of the 
women of Cadiz and Naples and ALirseilles ; with a self- 
possession, ease, and elegance which the Americans 
seldom possess, although the latter, by contact with 
the Creole population, have worn off much of the stiff- 
ness which characterizes the New EnHand States, while 



274 NEW ORLEANS. 

a long residence in the sunny South has both moulded 
their forms into more elegance and gracefulness and 
expanded their ideas and feelings into greater liberal- 
ity. They have lost that mixture of keenness in 
driving a bargain, and parsimoniousness in the expen- 
diture of its fruits, as well as that excessive caution 
in oj)ening themselves to strangers, lest they should 
commit themselves, which is so characteristic of the 
people of the North. At the same time, they retain 
in the fullest vigour the philanthropic spirit which is 
also a characteristic of the North "... apropos of 
which may be added the Englishman's surprise at find- 
ing in New Orleans so many charitable institutions, 
after so many accounts and descriptions of the profli- 
gacy there. 

At the St. Louis hotel that winter, Mr. Buckingham 
met a piece of social rococo, in the shape of a visitor ; 
the handsome and distinguished-looking Mademoiselle 
America Vespucci, the lineal descendant of the great 
navigator, and an advanced woman even for this day ; 
a member not only of secret political societies, but an 
actual combatant in man's clothing on the battle-field, 
where she had received a sabre cut on the back of the 
head. Her mission to the United States was to obtain 
a grant of land, in recognition of her name and parent- 
age. Mr. Buckingham says he had never witnessed in 
any other except Lady Hester Stanhope, "so noble a 
union of high birth and mental powers." 

In 18-13 Henry Clay ])aid his memorable visit to the 
city. Lady Wortley paid hers in "• ' 19," and could 
not " but think what a wonderful place this same New 
Orleans will be in the future. She came by the favour- 
ite route then from the North, down the river ; and how 



JSfEW ORLEANS. 277 

she writes of it ! With an enthusiasm as obsolete now 
as the steamboat that called it forth : " By night the 
scene is one of startling interest and magical splendour. 
Hundreds of lights are glancing in different directions, 
from the villages and plantations on shore, and from 
the magnificent floating palaces of steamers that fre- 
quently look like moving mountains of light and flame, 
so brilliantly are these enormous leviathans illuminated 
outside and inside. Indeed, the spectacle presented is 
like a dream of enchantment. Imagine steamer after 
steamer coming, sweeping, sounding, thundering on, 
blazing witli thousands of lights, casting long l^rilliant 
reflections on the fast rolling waters beneath. (There 
are often a number of them, one after another, like so 
many comets in Indian file.) Some of them are so 
marvellously and dazzlingly lighted, they really look 
like Aladdin's palace on fire (which it, in all likelihood, 
would be in America) sent skurrying and dashing down 
the stream, while perhaps just then all else is darkness 
around it." 

There were other scenes described by visitors, scenes 
that read as strange to the community now as they 
appeared then to travellers. Fredericka Bremer, who 
came to the city in 1852, Avrites : — 

"I saw nothing especially repulsive in these places (slave marts) 
excepting the whole thing; and I cannot help feeling a sort of 
astonishment that such scenes are possible in a community calling 
itself Christian. It seems to me sometimes as if it could not be 
reality, as if it were a dream. The great slave market is held in 
several houses situated in a particular part of the city. One is 
soon aware of their neighbourhood from the groups of coloured men 
and women, of all shades between black and light yellow, which 
stand or sit unemployed at the doors. I visited some of these 
houses. We saw at one of them the slave keeper or owner, a kind, 



278 iV'^TF ORLEANS. 

good-tempered man who boasted of the good appearance of his 
people. The slaves were summoned into a large hall, and arranged 
in two rows. They were well fed and clothed, but I have heard it 
said by the people here, that they have a very different appearance 
when they are brought hither, chained together, two and two, in 
long rows, after many days' fatiguing marches. The slightest 
kind word or joke called forth a sunny smile, full of good humour, 
on their countenances, and revealed a shiny row of beautiful pearl- 
like teeth. . . . Among the women, who were few in number in 
comparison with the men . . . there were some pretty, light niu- 
lattoes. A gentleman took one of the prettiest of them by the chin 
and opened her mouth to see the state of her teeth, with no more 
ceremony than if she had been a horse. . . . 

'* I went to witness a slave auction — it was held at one of the 
small auction-rooms which are found in various parts of New 
Orleans. The principal scene of slave auctions is a splendid 
rotunda, the magnificent dome of which is worthy to resound with 
songs of freedom. . . . A great number of people were assembled. 
About twenty gentlemenlike men stood in a half circle around a 
<lirty wooden platform, which for the moment was unoccupied. 
On each side, by the wall, stood a number of black men and 
women, silent and serious. The whole assembly was silent, and 
it seemed to me as if a heavy grey cloud rested upon it. One 
heard through the open door the rain falling heavily in the 
street. . . . Two gentlemen hastily entered, one of them, a tall, 
stout man, with a gay and good-tempered aspect, evidently a bon 
vivant, ascended the auction platform. I was told that he was an 
Englishman, and I can believe it from his blooming complexion, 
which was not American. He came apparently from a good 
breakfast, and he seemed to be actively employed in swallowing 
his last mouthful. 

"Taking the hammer in his hand, he addressed the assembly, 
stating briefly that the slaves were home slaves, all the property of 
one master, who having given bond for a friend who afterwards 
became bankrupt, was obliged to meet his responsibilities by 
parting with his faithful servants, who tlierefore were sold, not in 
consequence of any faults or deficiencies. After this, he beckoned 
to a woman among the blacks to come forward, and he gave her 
his liand to mount upon tlie platform, where she remained stand- 



NEW ORLEANS. 279 

ing beside him. She was a tall, well-grown mulatto, witli a band- 
some but sorrowful countenance, and a remarkably modest, noble 
demeanour. She bore on her arm a young sleeping child, upon 
which, during the whole auction ceremonial, she kept her eyes 
immovably riveted, with her head cast down. She wore a grey 
dress made close to the throat, and a pale yellow handkerchief, 
checked with brown, was tied around her head. 

"The auctioneer, after vaunting the woman's good qualities, skill, 
ability, character, good disposition, order, fidelity, her uncommon 
qualification for taking care of a house, her piety and talents and 
the chikl at her breast, which increased her value, obtained a 
starter of five hundred dollars for her, and finally the hammer fell 
at seven hundred. She was sold to one of the dark, silent figures 
before her. Wiio he was whether he was good or bad, whether 
he would lead her into tolerable or intolerable slavery — of all this 
the Itought and sold woman and mother knew as little as I did, 
neither to what part of the world he would take her. And the 
father of her child, where was he? . . . All were sold, — the young 
girl who looked pert rather than good, the young man, a mulatto 
with countenance exjiressive of gentleness and refinement, who 
had been brought up by his master and was greatly beloved by 
him . . . and last of all, the elderly woman whose demeanour or 
general appearance showed that she too had been in the service of 
a good master, and having been accustomed to gentle treatment, 
had become gentle and hajipy ... all bore the impression of hav- 
ing been accustomed to an affectionate family life. . . . And now, 
what was to be their future fate? How bitterly, if they fell into 
the hands of the wicked, would they feel the difference between 
then and now ! How horrible would be their lot ! . . . The 
mastei' had been good ; the servants good also, attached and faith- 
ful, and yet they were sold to whoever would buy them, sold like 
brute beasts." 

All travellers, however, did not write so gently of 
such scenes as Fredericka Bremer, nor accept slavery as 
philosophically as Buckingham did and Lady Wortley, 
who frankly confesses that she saw " only the couleur 
de rose of the business." Mademoiselle America Ves- 



280 NEW ORLEANS. 

pucci, for instance, to quote still from foreign visitors 
of the same period, could see nothing rose coloured 
about it. 

The improvements and renovations took at last a 
disastrous turn. Almonaster's cathedral was torn to 
the ground, and rebuilt with what was intended to be 
far greater art and magnificence ; Mansard roofs were 
added to the Cabildo and convent. The Baroness de 
Pontalba, who was in the city at the time, improved 
her father's old pointed, red-tiled roofed Spanish build- 
ings into the present French row, to be in harmony 
with the mansarded Cabildo and convent. The old 
Place d' Amies itself was improved into Jackson square, 
all vestige of grim-visaged war smoothed from it, planted 
in flowers and shrubs and (save the mark !) laid off in 
trim walks and neat bosquets ; its old flag-staff taken 
down to give place to the equestrian statue of the hero 
of Chalmette. 

In 1852 the three municipalities came together again 
into one city; that is, the other two came into the 
Faubourg Ste. Marie, for it now was New Orleans, the 
American had conquered the Creole, and the Cabildo 
yielded precedence to the City Hall. 

The next year came the great epidemic of cholera 
and yellow fever. Although no mention has been 
made of it ; during and accompanying all these years, 
when prosperity flushed the city, and wealth piled in 
banks, or ran in pleasure . . . there was at the rout and 
feast not any conventional, suggestive memento mori., 
there was Death itself, Death, as palpable, visible, audi- 
ble, as a stolid official executioner ; and not as a fleet 
ing presence but functioning steadily, regularly- for 
days, weeks, months, year after year. In the colonial 



NEW ORLEANS, 



281 



days, vessels stopping at 
Havana and St. Domingo 
would invariably bring in 
the epidemic raging there, 
and the little population 
would pay its tribute of 
lives, — always the freshest 
and healthiest of its new 
comers. The survivors of 
the fever, however, were 
immunized, or acclimated, 
not only in themselves, but 
for succeeding generations, 
and the 3'ellow fever, al- 
though a regular visitant, 
had, when the immigration 
was scant, rather a starved 
run in the city. The West 
Indian, inured to his own 
climate, was of course ac- 
climated to New Orleans. 
With the great inflow of 
American, Irish, and Ger- 
nuxn immigrants came the 
great epidemics of the twen- 
ties, increasing in raging 
violence through '27, '28, 
'29, to the fatar32. In 
September of that 
year, yellow 

fever, as -r -^ _-- -r 
usual, broke A>t o^'~^ 

out, but in £ir^"'^*^7,§qovri5| 




282 



NEW ORLEANS. 



October it was reenforced by Asiatic cholera. Five 
thousand died during the ten days following, and these 
are only the recorded deaths. In twelve days a sixth 
of the population was buried. Egress from the city 
was impossible ; families stayed at home within locked 
doors, and awaited the death signal. From the tales 
that survive of the visitation it would seem that human 














^J 



in the §^ louls, QWnetery. 



' \d''''W,. 



experience must have reached its limits of suffering 
by bereavement — and such a form of bereavement ! 
There are recollections of that time — buried in the 
graveyard — to exhume which is to revive the horrors 
of the plague of bygone centuries. 

A young Protestant minister. Dr. Clapp, who came 
to the city in 1822, and by a miracle survived all the 
epidemics, afterwards published the segment of his ex- 
perience. In '32 he was kept performing funeral services 
all day long; sometimes he did not leave the cemetery 



NEW ORLEANS. 



283 



until nine o'clock at night, when the interments were 
made by candle light. Attending a funeral one morn- 
ing at six o'clock, he found at the cemetery more than 
a hundred bodies without coffins, brought during the 
night and piled up like cord wood. Trenches were dug, 
into which they were thrown indiscriminately. The 
chain gang were pressed into service as gravediggers 












c -7. 



and undertakers. A hospital being found deserted, 
physicians, nurses, attendants all dead or run away, and 
the wards filled with corpses, — the mayor had the 
building and contents burned. Persons of fortune died 
unattended in their beds, and remained for days with- 
out burial. In every liouse there were sick, dying, and 
dead in the same room, often in the same bed. All 



284 NEW ORLEANS. 

places of business were closed ; drays, carts, carriages, 
hand-carts, and wheelbarrows were kept busy carrying 
loads of the dead through the streets, dumping them at 
cemetery gates. Before the mortuary chapel on Ram- 
part street there was ever a file of them, waiting for a 
sprinkle of holy water and the sign of the cross, the 
only burial service possible. Protestant ministers, 
priests, Sisters of Charity, died standing at their posts. 
Multitudes who l)egan the day in perfect health were 
corpses before night ; carpenters died on their benches ; 
a man ordered a coffin for a friend and died before it 
was finished. A bride died the night of her marriage, 
and was buried in her veil and dress cast off a few 
hours before. Three brothers died on the same day 
in a few hours of one another. A family of nine 
supped together in perfect health; by the end of the 
next twenty -four hours eight had died. A boarding- 
house of thirteen inmates was absolutely emptied, no 
one left. Corpses were found all along the streets, 
particularly in the early morning. 

A thick, dark atmosphere hung over the city, neither 
sun, moon, nor stars being visible. A hunter on Bayou 
St. John related that he killed no game ; not a bird 
was to be seen in the sky. Tar and pitch were kept 
burning at every corner, the flames casting a lurid 
glare over the horrors of night ; during the day cannon 
were fired, like minute-guns along the streets, frighten- 
ing the dying into quicker death; great conflagrations 
were of daily occurrence, adding to the general dread. 
The frightened negroes thought the day of judgment 
liad come; the enlightened thought it was hell. People 
stopped sending to market and cooking: they were 
afraid to eat anything substantial. 



NEW OliLEANS. 285 

The pious redoubled their fervour ; the pleasure 
lovers their desperate gayety, supping with dare-devil 
luxury, betting on one another's chances of death and 
the trenches, of which ghastly tales of burial alive were 
told. One, the wildest of a gay supper j)art3', extracted 
a promise from his friends that he at least should not be 
buried alive. He did not appear the next evening, and 
his friends, organizing a searching party for him, traced 
him to a cholera trench; had it opened; he was found 
dressed as he had left the supper, just under the earth, 
his handsome face stiff in its dead convulsion of horror, 
his hands outstretched in the effort of crawling and 
struggling through the putrid dead towards life aljove. 
Those who did not believe died with their ruling pas- 
sion on their lips; a passionate novel reader towards the 
end sent a friend out to buy the last novel of Sir Walter 
Scott's, which had been daily expected. It was placed 
in his hands . . . his cold fingers could turn the leaves, 
but his eyes were growing dim. " I am l)lind," he 
gasped, " I cannot see. I must be dying, and leaving 
this new production of immortal genius unread." 
Another one died uttering the name of Napoleon 
Bonaparte. The same epidemics returned the follow- 
ing summer, killing in the twelve months ten thousand 
out of a population of fifty-five thousand. In 1847, 
1848, and 1849, eight per cent of the people died. 

In the summer of 1853 the climax of death was 
reached. Over five thousand raw emigrants, Irish, 
English, and German, had landed during the year, and 
the city was in a state of upheaval — canals being 
widened and deepened, ditches dug, gas and water 
mains extended, new road beds constructed. Street 
cleaning being yet in an experimental condition, the 



286 



NEW ORLEANS. 



levees, back streets, slums, were foul and swarming 
with demoralized, filthy humanity. In ]\Iay the yellow 
fever broke out on an English ship freshly loaded with 
Irish emigrants, and spread through the shipping in 
port; only twenty -five deaths were reported for the 
closing week of June, the disease prowling still in 



A* If,?. 



1 



*"! I i^iffil' — n— ^rn 111 I irn Wim 





O7 .-«. 

— ^i£_«^^4^l 



obscure corners. By the middle of July the week's 
deaths were two hundred and four. Tliousands left 
the city in the panic that ensued, blocking every route 
and mode of travelling. The weather changed to daily 
rains and hot suns. The flo(n-s of the Charity Hospital 
were covered with pauper sick. For a week, one died 



NEW ORLEANS. 



287 



every half hour. Every day the death rate rolled up 
higher, and on the 22d of August, from midniglit to 
midnight, the city yielded a fresh victim every five 
minutes. The horrors of 1833 were repeated. Out 
of a sixty thousand population, forty thousand were 
attacked, eleven thousand died. In 1854 and 1855 the 
fever returned with cholera, with a death rate of 
seventy-two and seventy-three per thousand. In 1853 
it was one hundred and eleven per thousand. The 




It cornel* 

young Protestant minister, now an old one in the com- 
muiuty, writes, in answer to certain charges, and 
being from tlie North his statement is usually accepted 
as impartial: " In these epidemics, instead of the usual 
accompaniments of lawlessness and depravity, an ex- 
traordinary degree of benevolence prevailed, persons in 
every rank in life sacrificing time and money to care 
for the sick." 

But despite all this the forward march of the city 



288 NEW ORLEANS. 

was not interrupted ; even the memory and grief of it 
were passing shadows. The great financial crises of the 
decade swept over the place ; banks and fortunes were 
demolished, but only for a moment ; the very stones of 
the street seemed to cry out wealth and prosperity, and 
higher and higher figures end the statistical columns, 

— more emigrants, more imports, more exports, more 
trade, more cotton, sugar, ^plantations, slaves ; and to 
off-set, the more death, the more life, the city's gayety, 
like tlie city's gold, mounting in the flood tide over it 
To look back merely upon the printed account of it, 

— one can only repeat that it was the delirious reality 
of Law's delirious idea ; the fates and furies of old 
Paris's rue Quincampoix, by a touch of the golden 
wand, turning into muses and graces and pleasure pur- 
veyors for the little Paris in the New World. It was 
just such an orgie on a minute scale as old Paris had 
known under the Regency, and the oiouveaux riches 
here as there came from the aristocracy, and Avell pre- 
pared by ancestral seasoning, for the enjoyment of 
wealth. There were more and more theatres, operas, 
balls, hotels, clubs, cards and horse-racing, cocking 
mains, even bull-fights. . . . 

If New Orleans were the woman she is figured to be, 
she would interrupt here with her uncontrollable eager- 
ness : " Ah, yes ! Tell about my races, my famous races, 
and my track, my beautiful Metairie track ! Aud my 
spring meetings. . . . My great last Saturdays — my 
four-mile race day — and the famous, yes, the famous Lex- 
ington-Lecompte matches. Describe that ! Do describe 
that! " But what Avoman, even New Orleans herself, 
could descril)e tliat ? Who Avould want to read it when 
one can hear it told ? And when the memory of the 



NEW ORLEANS. 289 

race takes in, as it always does in New Orleans (for the 
turf was then a pastime for gentlemen and ladies, not 
a business for professionals), the crowds in the hotels, 
the noted men and women from all over the South who 
had come to the match, the whirl of carriages, and 
cabs, and vehicles of all kinds along the shell road, a 
kind of race track itself, the grand stand, exclusive as 
a private ball-room, glittering with ladies in toilets 
from the ateliers of the great modistes, Olympe and 
Sophie, and the ladies glittering with all those charms 
of beauty and conversation, which, in default of higher 
education, Heaven used then to supply women with . . . 
and the men, from all over the South glittering too 
in all tlie pride, arrogance, and self-sufficiency which 
their enemies, the moralists, supplied them with ; . . . 
the field packed ... as the field must be always 
packed where the grand stand is not part of the gate 
receipts ; and all round about, trees, fences, hedges, 
tops of carriages, crowded with every male being that 
could Avalk, ride, or drive from the city. " By the Lord 
Harry ! Not a nigger left to wait around a table ; " 
the track — that superb track of old Metairie — the 
jockeys petted and spoiled like ballet-girls — and the 
horses! A volume would not hold it all before we even 
get to Lexington and Lecompte, and after that a library 
would be needed to contain it. 

One must hear, not read, about how " the sun was 
dropping behind the trees, and the sky was all a glory, 
when Lecompte passed the grand stand on his first 
heat in 7.26 ! And the glory of the sky was simply 
nothing, sir ! when Lecompte won the race, beating the 
best heats on record ! " And tlie next year, when Lex- 
ington ran against the record, and beat it! That, as 



290 NEW ORLEANS. 

tlie old gentlemen now — tlie young bloods of that day 
— say, was /iorsg-racing. 

And the dinners afterwards, at Moreau's, Victor's, 
Miguel's, and the famous lake restaurants, with their 
rival chefs and rival cellars ! And after that again 
the grand salons of the old St. Louis and St. Charles, 
filled with everybody ; and all enjoying themselves, as 
the phrase well puts it. That was what horse-racing 
meant then. Who thought of epidemics or financial 
panics ? Alas ! tlie old Metairie is expiating its sins 
now as a cemetery, and its patrons, its beaux and its 
belles and its horses, — they are expiating their sins 
too, in cemeterial ways. 

Within sight of the cemetery, a part of the same 
ridge of land, sinking into the same stretch of swamp, 
lies another relic of past time and civilization — the 
old duelling ground, now a park, a cemetery, too, in its 
way, although but one tomb stands there, that of its 
last owner, who, infatuated with love for his beautiful 
oaks, requested to be buried under the shadow of their 
branches. In the childish days of the city, when dis- 
putes were scarce, we hear of the officers drawing their 
swords and fighting for pastime in the moonliglit on 
the levee ; for other humours there were always quiet 
and retirement to be found anywhere outside of the city 
walls. AVhen the emigres from France and the islands 
arrived with their different times and different man- 
ners, and when the disbanded soldiers from Bonaparte's 
armies dropped into the population, there was as great 
a renaissance in duelling, as in the other condiments of 
life, so to speak. Fencing masters flourished, and 
" salles d'escrime " were the places of fashionable cult- 
ure for young men. In Paris, gentlemen would step 



NEW OELEANS. 



293 



out and fight d Vimpromptu " sous le fanal cle la come- 
die," Young blades, returning from Paris, sharpened 
by encounters over there with blades noted in the whole 
European world, must therefore tight also a Vimpromptu 
" sous le fanal de I'op^ra," otherwise the great lantern 
of the Orleans theatre, whose circle of light on a broad, 
smooth pavement furnished as prett}^ conditions for the 
settlement of a question about a soprano's voice or a 
ballet dancer's steps as could be desired anj^where. The 
weather not permitting this, all adjourned to Ponton's, 




the fashionable fencing room, just below the theatre. 
"When we fought at Ponton's." "Oh, he gave me a 
beautiful thrust at Ponton's." . . . This was the be- 
ginning of many a good friendship, and of many a good 
story of the fathers, uncles, cousins, and elder brothers 
of the young gentlemen at the Orleans college. 

The stories of another generation take in the Oaks. 
What a trooping of ghosts under the old trees, if all 



294 NEW ORLEANS. 

the votaries of honour who had fought or assisted others 
to fight tliere could revisit the place in spirit! What a 
throng would mine host of the restaurant opposite have 
to welcome, if all who quaffed a glass, in a happy reprieve 
from death or wounds, at that bar could return again! 
And he was the man of all in the city, it was said, who 
could, if he would, tell as much as the old oaks. Every- 
body fought with everybody then ; the score of duels 
was kept like the score of marriage offers of a belle. 
Individuals counted up eigliteen, thirty, fifty of them. 
Mandeviile Marigny fought with his brother-in-law. 
. A father and a son fought duels the same day. On one 
Sunday in 1839 ten duels were fought. "• Killed on the 
field of honour ! " The legend is a common enough 
one in the old cemeteries. 

Besides the great national differences between the 
Americans and Creoles, which were settled in a great 
national way, with shot-guns and rifles, there was 
every other iuiaginable difference settled under those 
trees, — politics, love, ball-room etiquette, legal points, 
even scientific questions. A learned scientist, an hy- 
draulic engineer, permitting himself to say (in justice 
to him, it was to exaggerate the importance of some 
personal theory) that the JNlississippi was a mere rill in 
comparison to rivers in Europe, a Creole answered him : 
" Sir, I will never allow the Mississippi to be disparaged 
in my presence by an arrogant pretender to knowl- 
edofe." A challeup-e followed, and the mouth of the 
defamer was cut across from one cheek to the other. 
In a ball-room a gentleman petitioned a belle : '•'• Honour 
me with half tliis dance?" "Ask monsieur," she an- 
swered, '^it belongs to him." "Never," spoke her 
cavalier, bearing her off in the waltz, and just catch- 



NEW ORLEANS. 295 

ing tlie softly spoken, " Ali, vous etes mal eleve." 
Not a word more was said. The next morning the 
critic received a challenge and in the afternoon a neat 
thrust. Almost every day for years the Gascon cow- 
herds in tlie neighbourhood would see pilgrims on foot 
or in carriages wending their way to the Oaks ; and 
the inquisitive would peep, and in the cool green light 
under the trees, witness the reparation of honour as 
required by the code ; a flashing, pretty sight from a 
distance, when the combatants were lithe and young 
and the colichemardes worthy of their art. 

There is an episode (it may or may not be true) when 
the looker-on was not a cowherd; but the seconds, the 
surgeons, the one principal standing, might well start, 
as they did, in surprise : a woman, young, beautiful, and 
courageous as any of them. She had waited until one 
fell and did not rise, and then rushed forward. 

She was still in her opera cloak, with her white silk 
gown trailing in the grass, her satin slippers wet with 
dew, her arms and neck bare. In truth, she had not 
thousfht to change her dress. There had been the' 
opera, and then a long supper, filled with gayety; he 
(the fallen duellist) as reckless, daring, and devoted, as 
usual, proffering his love with every eye glance, and she, 
refusing it as coquettisldy as she had done for a year 
past, for almost the best part of love to a great belle is 
having it constantly offered, that it may be refused. 
The coachman (coachmen hear everything that a car- 
riage is needed for) held her back as she was entering 
the house with her party, to whisper what he had 
heard. She gave a whispered order in return. And 
the supper, as has been said, was gay, gay until day- 
light. He was more himself, she more herself, than 



296 NEW OltLEANS. 

ever, and the guests were more interested than ever in 
the duel between them; he ever thrusting, she parrying. 

He had left with the others. She waited as she was 
until the house was quiet in sleep, and then slipping 
out to her carriage in the grey dawn, drove to the 
Oaks, and chose her position, and waited alone under 
the trees ; her carriage, of course, driving off to come 
up after the other carriages. 

She was without doubt a great beauty, a type, an 
absolute type (one may well say it, it was a common- 
place in the city), — like a sunrise or sunset, or the 
moonlight. And the men on the field knew her well; 
but they declared that never had she appeared so 
beautiful as when, throwing her opera cloak back, her 
white gown trailing, her satin slippers wet with dew, 
her hair falling from its stately coiffure over her neck, 
she rushed forward like a A^alkyrie and picked up the 
form of her cavalier ; his blood dropping over her hands, 
cloak, and gown. She could have borne him off alone, 
she was strong enough, and quite as tall as he. She 
did bear him off in her carriage when the surgeons had 
finished, they telling her pretty plainl}^ that he, her 
cavalier, was finished too. And she drove with him to 
his house, and sent the coachman for her confessor, and 
. . . married her cavalier as soon as he was conscious . . . 
and men were ready to maintain on the field of lionour, 
and elsewhere, that under no other circumstances would 
she ever have married him, which is a curious fact, 
a1)out women and about duels. 

There were other duels under the oaks, which men 
pause in their reminiscences of the past to describe, but 
which women care not to tell nor to hear about. These 
were the duels with broadswords; particularly that 



NEW OliLEANS. 



297 



noted series during the spring of 1840, when the maitres 
d' amies themselves were the opponents ; Creole, French- 
man, Italian, German, and Spaniard, tighting not for 
their personal honour, but to prove their art. There 
were also duels on horseback with broadswords. The 
historic one of this kind was fought on the " Plaine 
Raquette," in the Faubourg Marigny, between a young 
Creole and a French cavalry officer. Our chronicler 
gives the account of an eye witness: " It was a hand- 
some sight. The adversaries, stripped to the waist, were 
mounted on spirited horses. They rode up, nerved for 
the combat ; the Frenchman, heavy, somewhat ungainly, 
but with muscles like whip-cords, and a broad, hairy 
chest, w^hich gave every evidence of strength and en- 
durance ; the Creole, lighter in weight, admirably pro- 
portioned, counterbalanced with youthful suppleness 
his adversary's rigid strength. A clashing of steel, 
and" — omitting the details — " tlie Creole, by a rapid 
half-circle, and l)y a coup de points a droite plunged 
his blade through the body of the French officer." 





CHAPTER XIII. 



n^HE children who, in 1804, looked from the balconies 
"-*- around the Place d'Armes to see the American flag- 
raised in it, vaguely hearing their grandparents behind 
them tell of the different flags they had seen raised to 
that staff, were not grandparents themselves much be- 
fore they saw another flag officially raised to proclaim 
another domination over the city. Erom grandparent 
to grandparent, three memories contained the whole 
history of the place : the incredible, for that is what his- 
tory stores memory with, and so the grandmother of 
to-day passes on to the grandmother of the future tales 
of as open-eyed wonderment as she herself listened to 
at her grandmother's knee. 

To give them as tliey are thus being transmuted in 
their homely human crudity to tradition, — New Orleans 
abandoned herself, heart and soul, to the cause of the 
Southern Confederacy. The reasonableness of a man's 
self-sacrifice to a cause, or a woman's to a love, may be 
questioned, but not the sublimity, surely not. While 
the city, as blind in her passion as when she defied 
Spain, was giving herself up more and more to her new 
devotion, pouring out, as if from inexhaustible sources, 

298 



NEW ORLEANS. 299 

her men and her money, forgetting Jefferson's dictum 
about the mouth of the Mississippi, two expeditions 
were fitted out against her by the United States, one to 
come down the river, one to ascend from the Gulf. 
The latter was successful. On the morning of the 25th 
of April, 1862, seventeen gunboats and a flotilla of 
smaller vessels rode at anchor in the river before her, 
and she lay as helpless under their guns as she had 
lain under the guns of O'Reilly. To the populace it 
was the incredible that had happened, just as in the 
time of O'Reilly. 

The rain was pouring, as at the advent of the 
Spanisli avenger, and, as then, the levee was lined with 
a despairing crowd. Some of the ships bore evidences 
of fighting, that was the only alleviation to the popu- 
lar feeling. There had been some fighting done. 
Courage was in fact the only thing that seemed ready 
in the emergency, everything else was incomplete, un- 
prepared, disorganized, through shameful, disgraceful, — 
the people even whispered, — traitorous, neglect and 
carelessness. What, they growled, were seven hundred 
men apiece in two badly equipped fortifications ? a 
straggling battery or two? an improvised, patched-up 
flotilla of gunboats, manned by ignorant, undisciplined 
crews ? rafts ? iron chains, against the superb strength 
and equipment before them? And these were only, 
half ; as many remained behind to bring the forts to 
terms. What availed against such a force the six 
thousand men given by the Confederacy to protect the 
city ? And even now they were evacuating the city 
with their general ! The curses were not muttered 
when the crowd on the levee spoke of this army and 
its commander. 



300 NEW ORLEANS. 

The sky was hidden by a canopy of smoke, streaked 
with flames. Heaps of burning cotton, sugar, salt 
meats, spirits, provisions of all kinds lined the levee. 
In the river the shipping, tug-boats, and gun-boats, 
floated down the current in flames. Molasses, running 
like water, flushed the gutters. All night the city had 
gloAved in the lurid light of her own incendiarism. 
The little children, seeing the gleams through the closed 
windows, and hearing the cannons from the forts, trem- 
bled in their beds in terrified wakefulness. Deserted 
by their parents, and shrinking instinctively from their 
negro nurses, they asked one another in whispers : 
" Will the Yankees kill us all ? " 

The next morning, from old Christ Church belfry, 
on Canal street, the bell tapped the alarm. Mothers 
called their children to them, and, sitting behind closed 
doors, listening, counting, cried, " The Yankees are 
here ! " The children, horrified to see a mother weep, 
cried aloud, too, despairingly, "The Yankees are 
here ! " Slaves, rushing out, leaving the houses open, 
disordered, behind them, shouted triumphantly to one 
another, " The Yankees are here ! " 

The rabble, holding riot in the streets ; men, women, 
and children, staggering under loads of pilferings 
from the conflagration, cried, too, " The Yankees are 
here!" 

Early in the morning officers came from the flag-ship, 
bearing a summons to surrender. The mayor deferred 
to the military authority in command. The Confeder- 
ate general, evacuating the city with his army, put the 
responsibility back upon the mayor. During the col- 
loquy in the city hall, the populace surged and raged 
in the streets outside, hurling insults, imprecations, 



NEW ORLEANS. 301 

threats, through the open windows, at the Union otHcers. 
A wild hurrah herakled some new outburst. There was 
an expectant pause in the mayor's parh:)ur. Through a 
window a ragged bundle was thrown into the room ; a 
mutilated, defiled. United States flag ; the flag that had 
just been hoisted over the United States mint by a barge 
crew. Some wild-spirited lads had instantly climbed 
the staff and torn the flag down, to drag it, followed by 
a hooting mob, through the street. The open window 
of the city hall and the uniformed officers inside were, 
in the temper of the moment, a lieaven-sent opportunity 
for insult. 

Sustained by his council, the mayor refused to either 
surrender the city or lower the state flag over the city 
hall. The Federals could take the city if they wished, 
no resistance was possible. " We yield," he wrote, "to 
the Federal commander, to physical force alone, and 
maintain our allegiance to the government of the Con- 
federate States. Beyond this a due regard for our dig- 
nity, our rights, and the flag of our country does not, I 
think, permit me to go." The Federal commander 
then notified the mayor to remove the women and chil- 
dren within twenty-four hours. " Sir," wrote the mayor 
to this, " you cannot but know that there is no possible 
exit from the city for a population that exceeds one 
hundred and forty thousand, and you must therefore be 
aware of the utter inanity of such a notification ; our 
women and children cannot escape from your shells. . . . 
You are not satisfied with the peaceable possession of an 
undefended city ; you wish to humble and disgrace us 
by the performance of an act against which our nature 
rebels. This satisfaction you cannot expect at our hands. 
We will stand your bombardment unarmed and defence- 



302 NEW ORLEANS. 

less as we are. The civilized world will condemn to 
indelible infamy the heart that will conceive the deed 
and tlie hand that will dare to consummate it." 

It was finally decided that the Federals should take 
possession of the city, and themselves lower the state 
flag from the city hall. 

The mayor issued a proclamation requesting all citi- 
zens to retire to their homes during these acts of 
authority which, he said, it would be folly to resist, 
reminding them that at least their own authorities had 
not been forced to lower their flag. Tlie people, not- 
withstanding, filled the streets about the city hall, a 
lowering, angry crowd that shook with wrath at the 
sight of the detachment of sailors and marines in 
United States uniform, which, with bayonets fixed, and 
preceded by two howitzers, crossed Lafayette square. 
They were halted facing St. Charles street ; the how- 
itzers were drawn into the thoroughfare and pointed at 
the crowd, up and down. 

An officer with attendants mounted the steps of the 
city hall and informed the mayor that he would proceed 
to haul down the flag. The mayor, a son of the people 
himself, and not scliooled in the niceties of etiquette, 
answered, his voice trembling with emotion : " Very 
well, sir, you can do it ; but I wish to say that there is 
not in my entire constituency so wretched a renegade 
as would be willing to exchange places with you." 

The mayor then descended the steps of the hall and 
placing himself in front of the crowd and close to the 
mouth of the cannon pointing down the street, he stood 
there immovably with folded arms, and eyes fixed on 
the gunner, avIio, lanyard in hand, held himself in readi- 
ness for action. The crowd preserved a breathless 



NEW ORLEANS. ^ 303 

silence. The state flag was lowered and the United 
States colours hoisted. 

The United States officers returned, the guns were 
withdrawn, the uniformed squad moved again across 
Lafayette square. As they passed through the Camp 
street gate they heard hurrahs behind them ; it was 
the crowd cheering their mayor. 

The naval authorities now handed the city over to 
the land forces, and General Benjamin Butler took 
possession with his army of fifteen tliousand men. 

The regiments marched triumphantly througli the 
streets to their quarters, banners flying, music resound- 
ing ; the negroes, in posi:-ession of the banquettes, gave 
themselves up to the celebration and exhibition of 
their new freedom. It was their hour of victory — and 
retribution. Men, women, and children — all, all were 
free alike, free and equal, for that was the way the 
phrase ran then. The white men looked on from win- 
dows and balconies ; the women still sat in doors, hold- 
ing their children together, and as the tread of the pass- 
ing soldiers, the blare of the music, the guffaw of the 
banquette crowd struck their ears, — they thought, not 
in the scientific truisms, political axioms or logical 
sequences, which since have taught them resignation, — ■ 
and they did not shed any more tears. 

Their grandmothers had heard the shots by which 
O'Reilly murdered (as they called it) six as noble 
patriots and gentlemen as ever lived, but their grand- 
mothers had never felt — O'Reilly never dared — the 
insulting, degrading humiliation of this moment. Free, 
free and equal! And it was not the rich mother, the 
lady mother alone, who felt this, her look instinctively 
singling out her little daughters — the poorest mothers, 



304 NEW ORLEANS. 

the commonest scrub of a white working woman felt 
the same humiliation put upon her gutter children — 
and cursed the power, the flag, the music, the soldiers 
that were doing it. 

It is all archaic noAv, and sounds ridiculous. But, 
however advanced and progressive a woman's brain may 
l)ecome, in an emergency she always seems to feel in 
archaisms. Negro soldiers, in uniform, ordering them! ! 
White men putting negro soldiers over them!!! Tliat 
was as far as their hearts and minds went then. 

It seems a trifling consideration in a great war what 
women feel; how the men fight is the important fact. 
But is it not what the women feel, in a war (the chil- 
dren feeling as the mothers feel), that dictates history 
in advance? Or, as it might be said, if to the men 
belongs the war, to the women belongs the peace after 
the war. At least it was so in New ( )rleanSo 

The little children in Beranger's song beg about 
Napoleon, — 

" Paiiez nous de lui, Grand'mere, parlez nous de lui." 

Tlie little children in New Orleans, when they are very 
good, are treated by their grandmothers not to the 
tlirilling adventures of Blue Beard and Jack the Giant 
Killer, but to tales of the Federal general in command 
of the city during the war. And not only the children 
enjoy these tales, any one, and — as the Creoles say, 
meaning Northerners — even the Americans, when they 
want (or want a visiting friend) to hear a good story 
well told, ask a New Orleans woman to tell her expe- 
riences after the capture of the city by the Federals ; 
and wherever slie be, in Paris, on the Nile, or seated in 
her own parlour or on her own balcony, she tells it, 



NEiV ORLEANS. 305 

always with the same verve, and always, if possible, with 
more and more burlesque. " But the improbability ! 
The indiscretion! " Oh! that is another matter. If 
women are to tell only probable and discreet stories the 
Constitution had better be amended forthwith. 

Nothing less than official dates can convince one that 
the regime in question lasted but little over six months; 
it seems inconceivable that so much could be packed 
into so short a time. And it was not laughable then. 
As Madeleine Hachard says, one laughs over one's ad- 
ventures afterwards. From the first day, sentinels 
were stationed at suspected doors, and domiciliary visits 
made for arms, papers, flags, and other treasonable 
matter. Every runaway negro could carry charges of 
high treason and concealed treasures to the provost 
marshal, and have ladies' armoires promptly searched 
and bureau drawers run through by soldiers' hands, as, 
in old days, a dishonest servant's room was searched ; 
yes, and the lady, too, spoken to as if she were the 
negro servant and the theft had Ijeen proven. It was 
something to make cliildren open their eyes, to hear 
mothers and grandmothers ordered about and told that 
they were untruthful, and see their pretty things tossed 
and Jcicked upon the floor. Oh ! the provost marshal ! 
What terror that name struck to the childish soul ; it 
was so unintelligible, and it meant such almightiness 
of power! 

It is related by one of the Federal officers present 
at the time, that, when flag-officer Farragut reported to 
General Butler the tearing down of the United States 
flag from the mint, the latter said : " I will make an 
example of that fellow by hanging him." The naval 
officer smiled as he remarked : " You know you will 



306 NEW ORLEANS. 

have to catch him and then hang him." " T know that, 
but I will catch him and then hang him." It was as 
easy for him to do both as it had been for O'Reilly to 
execute his predetermination. 

The lad, Mumford, was arrested, tried by court- 
martial and condemned to be hung. A cry of horror 
arose from the city, and, as with O'Reilly, every means 
to obtain mercy was tried. It was represented and 
urged that the city had not surrendered at the time; 
that the hoisting of the flag over the mint was itself 
unwarranted ; the youth of the victim was pleaded ; the 
ignorance, the irresponsibility of the foolhardy act, the 
frenzied, delirious state of the public mind.' In vain. 
An example must be made ; the insult to the flag must 
be avenged. The lad was hanged, and with fine dra- 
matic effect, on a gallows in front of the mint, under 
the very flag-staff ; serried ranks of soldiers guarding 
the street. But see how unreliable a thing an exam- 
ple is, how it may turn and rend that very principle 
which it was begotten to illustrate. In vain, now, do 
historians plead and military authorities represent, in 
vain are explanations, denials, extenuations. Forever, 
in local eyes, will the front of the mint seem to bear 
the Cain mark of the gallows ; forever will that flag- 
staff seem to be draped with the anathemas that were 
uttered by every mother's heart, the day of the hang- 
ing of the lad. And for twenty years after that day 
there wandered through the streets of New Orleans a 
tliin, wrinkled, bent, crazy woman, wandering always, it 
seemed, as if by command, across groups of children on 
their way to and from school. The children never ran 
and shrank from her as from most lunatics. "Hush ! " 
they would say; "she is Mumford's mother." And 



NEW ORLEANS. 307 

they would tell the story to one another, with all tlie 
improbable variations and versions, Avhicli madden his- 
torians, but which the sympatlietic heart never fails to 
add. " But she is not Mumford's mother," many would 
insist. "She only thinks she is Mumford's mother." 
" She is Mumford's mother, all the same," would be the 
reply. During the school hours, the poor old woman 
would wander in the business thoroughfares, and when 
tired out she would crouch in the corner of some house- 
step and sleep, and the passers-by would slip a coin into 
her lap (she never begged awake). ''That is Mum- 
ford's poor mother," they would explain. 

The doughty but unmannerly mayor was sent to the 
casemates of one fort, his young secretary to another, 
his legal advisers were shipped to Fort Lafayette. It 
was hard for the citizens of New Orleans to believe that 
these two great French lawyers, Soule and Mazureau, 
could be sent off like common felons. But that Avas 
in the beginning, when one could be surprised. First 
and last, over sixty prominent citizens were sent to the 
forts, or to that other well-proved place of imprison- 
ment, Ship Island, where the contumacious were fast- 
ened with ball and chain, and made to fill sand bags 
under a negro guard. With all the patriotism in the 
world to sustain their hearts and to preserve their dig- 
nity, the luxurious gentlemen of New Orleans some- 
times, when the sun was more unbearably hot than 
usual and no one was in earshot, were not above making 
an appeal occasionally to their black drivers, using old- 
time cajoleries. "Come now, uncle, let up a little." 
"Don't call me uncle ; I ain't no kin o' yourn." The 
stern rebuke has passed into a proverb. 

Everybody was arrested ; clergymen for refusing to 



308 NEW ORLEANS. 

pray for the President of the United States and all 
others in authority, editors for publishing Confederate 
victories, doctors for refusing fraternal recognition of 
Union doctors, druggists for selling drugs to persons 
going into the Confederacy, storekeepers for refusing 
to oj^en their stores, a bookseller who exhibited a skel- 
eton marked " Chickahominy," any one possessing trea- 
sonable pictures or papers (illustrated papers favourable 
to the Confederacy). The commandant's system was 
so perfect, that he boasted he had a spy behind the 
chair of every rebel family head in the city. The 
result was, that no man arose in the morning with any 
certainty that he might not spend the next night in 
jail. 

Even women were arrested. A lady was sent to 
Ship Island for laughing while a Federal funeral pro- 
cession was passing her house. An old lady teacher 
was sent to a prison in the city for having a Confede- 
rate document in her possession ; young ladies were 
arrested and carried before the provost marshal for 
singfinsf '' Dixie " and the " Bonnie Blue Flag." " The 
venom of the she-adder is as dangerous as that of the 
he-adder" was the legend General Butler had printed 
and hung up in his office ; it was adopted as the watch- 
word of his emulative subordinates. Every day women 
were brought to his Star Chamber by scores, to stand 
before liim, while he sat cursing tiie men of the Con- 
federacy and lecturing them on their want of respect 
to the United States ; a Confederate flag had been 
found in their houses ; a miniature one had been worn 
in their hair or stuck in their fichus ; the flowers in 
their bonnets were arranged to represent Confederate 
colours ; they had their dresses fastened with Confeder- 



NEW ORLEANS. 309 

ate buttons ; they had refused to enter a car or omni- 
bus in which they saw a Federal soldier ; they walked 
out in the street to avoid passing under the United 
States flag hanging over the banquette. The general 
however, bethought him of a correction of this dis- 
respect ; flags were hung not only over the sidewalks of 
the principal streets, but strings of them were stretched 
entirely across the street, and guards were jjlaced to 
seize the women who tried to avoid passing under them, 
and compel the ordeal ; but even as they were being 
dragged under, the women would manage to draw their 
shawls over their heads or put up their parasols. And 
then General Butler launched his Order No. 28 against 
the ladies of New Orleans, the order that can only be 
alluded to in polite society ; that was condemned in 
the House of Lords as without precedent in the annals 
of war, and denounced in tlie House of Commons as 
repugnant to the feelings of the nineteenth century ; 
that drew from the " London Times " the comment that 
it realized all that had ever been told of tyranny by 
victor over the vanquished, and that no state of negro 
slavery could be more absolute than that endured by 
the whites in the city of New Orleans. 

A passing stranger, an alien, relates that he was caught 
on a street corner in a shower of rain one afternoon, and 
saw two curs fighting. The whipped one ran away, and 
he remarked that the cur was simply " making a change 
of base," which was a Federal newsjDaper's explana- 
tion of a recent defeat of one of the LTnion armies. 
The stranger was immediately arrested, conveyed to 
the custom house, imprisoned all night, and taken 
before Butler in the morning. " The general, " so his 
account runs, " sat dressed in full uniform, with sword ; 



310 NEW OBLEANS. 

on the table before him lay a loaded revolver, sentinels 
stood at the door, orderlies and soldiers crowded the 
anteroom. An Irishwoman was asking for a passport 
to go to her son in the Confederate army. After much 
billingsgate on both sides, ' Well, now, General Butler,' 
she said, ' the question is, are you going to give me a 
passport or are you not ? ' He coolly leaned back in 
his chair and with a provoking smile slowly replied: 
' No, woman, I will never give a rebel mother a pass to 
go to see a rebel son.' She gazed at him a moment, 
and then as coolly and deliberately replied: ' General 
Butler, if I thought the devil was as ugly a man as 
you, I would double my prayers night and morning, 
that I might never fall into his clutches; ' and, bolting 
past the sentinels, she disappeared." 

It was at this period that the gentlemen among the 
Federal officers found their position under their com- 
mander intolerable, even for soldiers. Not being dis- 
ciplined to his mode of warfare, they had, from the day 
of their occupation of the city, been overstrained by 
their secret anxieties and their efforts in behalf of the 
vanquished. Like the Spanish officers under O'Keilly, 
they found a thousand common feelings to counterbal- 
ance the one great political difference ; past friendships, 
ties, relationships, if other reason were needed than the 
one that they were gentlemen, and their enemies women 
and children ; fearfully and restlessly they haunted 
the streets, swarming with arrogant negro and white 
soldiers, quaking much more before an application of 
their general's order than the women themselves did ; 
hence volumes of delicate episodes and pretty ro- 
mances, which the women of the period love also to 
relate. 



NEW ORLEANS. 311 

The foreign consuls exerted themselves in every 
way ; the French consul exercising, as French consuls 
always will in New Orleans, a quasi-]Mitevnal author- 
ity over the citizens, soothed, advised, helped. The 
captains of foreign vessels in port offered their friend- 
ship and assistance. It wa:: needed under so energetic 
a conqueror. In September, all persons, male and 
female, who had not renewed their allegiance to the 
United States, or who held sympathy with or alle- 
giance to the Confederate States, were ordered to re- 
port themselves to the nearest provost marshal, with a 
descriptive list of all their property, real, personal, and 
mixed, their place of residence and their occupation, 
signed by themselves, to receive a certificate from the 
marshal as claiming to be enemies or friends of the 
United States. Neglect to register subjected the de- 
linquent to fine or imprisonment with hard labour, or 
both, with his or her property confiscated. The form of 
the oath of allegiance prescribed was an "iron-clad" one. 
Another order required every householder to return to 
the nearest provost marshal a list of inmates, with sex, 
age, occupation, and a statement Avhether registered 
alien, loyal, or enemy to the United States, with the 
usual penalty for neglect. Policemen were held re- 
sponsible for returns on their l)eats. It was a virtual 
sentence of transportation against the families of Con- 
federate soldiers. 

The women and children, the registered enemies to 
the United States, allowed but little more than the 
clothing on their bodies, were put across the lines into 
the Confederacy. These were the fortunate ones who 
had means and connections in the Confederacy, but 
the majority, the widowed mothers whose sons were 



312 NEW OELEANS. 

in the army, the wives of clerks and workingmen whose 
husbands were fighting, these were forced to the per- 
jury of tlie iron-clad oath ; and of all the exigencies of 
the war, this was unqualifiedly the saddest, the costliest. 

Then followed the carnival of confiscations and auc- 
tion sales. 

The commandant-general had seized one of the 
handsomest residences in the city for his personal use. 
Those of his subordinates who cared to follow his exam- 
ple, selected each his house, ordering the owner out 
and taking ]30Ssession ; and after these came the great 
number of civil employees, who had to be housed, and 
with them it was also a mere question of taking and 
having. But after these there were the camp followers, 
those who came, as the Duke of Saxe- Weimar would 
say, for the mere accumulation of wealth. It was for 
them a land of Canaan, such as they knew Providence 
would never repeat. Seizures and confiscations threw 
opportunities of a lifetime upon the market ; and while 
no man was sure when he arose in the morning that 
he would not spend the night in jail, no woman now 
when she arose in the morning was sure that she would 
not spend that night in the streets. 

The property of the registered enemies was not con- 
fiscated, but the alternative was little better. Not 
allowed to take anything but necessary clothing, and 
the time of preparation for departure being short, fami- 
lies of limited means were forced to sell everything at 
auction. The auctions were in the hands of a "ring." 
The sales were a mockery. A woman who considered 
her effects worth a thousand dollars might, it is said, 
if she were exceedingly meek and huml^le, and paid all 
commissions, receive a balance of twenty or thirty dol- 



NEW ORLEANS. 313 

lars. The auction marts, as may be expected, were 
crowded. Houses, horses, carriages, jewehy, wardrobes, 
silk and satin gowns, fihny articles of ladies' under- 
clothing, family portraits, silver, were put up every 
day. A man with a thousand dollars bought ten thou- 
sand dollars' worth. A soldier's pay would purchase a 
family outfit. Camp followers, washerwomen, and 
cooks, wore velvets ; real laces sold for the price of 
calico ; negresses went around blazing in jewelry. 
The treasure heaps of a Barataria were scattered 
broadcast in the city for two months. Entire libraries 
and sets of furniture, horses and carriages, pictures, 
pianos, clocks, carpets, cases of bric-a-brac, were packed 
and sent to distant homes. Silver, in banks or in table 
service, was always treasonal)le if in the possession of 
a Confederate sympathizer, as it was called, and it 
seemed at times that the sympathy was only treason- 
able in proportion to the silver possessed. But there 
was a way of ransoming the silver and property, as 
there had been a way of ransoming delicate old gentle- 
men from Ship Island and the forts ; and if the women 
of the house were nervous, and their imaginations 
easily influenced by terror for themselves or their rela- 
tives, they did not haggle over terms or means, and the 
profit was the same to the avengers of loyalty. 

All this, as every one has explained since, until every 
one knows it, was only according to the fortunes of 
war. Even the children in their rudiments should have 
known it then, for what had their a, b, e's served them 
unless to spell out how, in the past, this nation or man 
had conquered that nation or man, at this place and at 
that, and what had happened afterwards ? and if even 
the women had considered, what they endured was 



314 NEW ORLEANS. 

infinitely easier warfare than history or romance had 
pictured, in many instances, even since the Middle 
Ages. But history and romance never disappear so 
completely from the memory as when experience in 
propria persona makes her appearance. 

" The fortunes of war " was also proven during these 
rare opportunities not entirely an allegorical expression ; 
and in its other sense, the practical, it had chapters of 
enlightenment for the military novice as well as for the 
civil, for the conquerors as well as for the conquered, 
a truth which the following sufficiently illustrates. 
The Englishman, the alien in the Confederate States, 
as he calls himself, whose experience under the Butler 
regime has been quoted, relates that some years after 
he left New Orleans he happened to be on a steamer at 
Nassau, and observing some negro boatmen alongside 
throwing over meat to an enormous shark which they 
called Butler, he asked them why they applied such a 
name to an honest shark. They said it was because he 
kept away all other sharks from the bay, so as to have 
all the prey for himself. 

In December, General Banks superseded General 
Butler. The jDopulace which, in the exercise of its 
infallible prerogative as populace, branded the first con- 
queror of New Orleans as "■ Jiloody O'Reilly," has sent 
the second conqueror of the city down to posterity 
marked as "Beast Butler." 

Some civil organization of the place was now at- 
tempted on the new political basis. The military 
authorities had courts opened and appointed magis- 
trates, " Union " magistrates. The President of the 
United States appointed Union judges of the Supreme 
Court. An election was held, and a Union governor 



NEW ORLEANS. 315 

elected, a Union constitutional convention was held, 
and a Union constitution of the state adopted, a Union 
legislature elected. Tlie closed Protestant churches 
were unbarred and services were conducted in them by 
Union ministers, and there was even an effort made at 
social gayety; balls and receptions were given by the 
military authorities to Union guests, who practised 
social equality with the negroes. For long years, after 
all this was over, a coloured barber, famous in local 
circles (as all good barbers everywhere are famous) for 
his inimitable loquacity, used to tell how he once opened 
such a ball with the wife of the general in connnand 
(with wliat truth the word of a barber guarantees). 
But the story was a good one, and told most delectably, 
and the old seedy Confederates were glad enough to 
hear it, and laugh away some of their chagrin over it, 
and carry it home to their wives and children, who 
found it vastly amusing too. 

But to the natives, that period, to the close of the 
war, is vague and confused like the last hours of a long 
vigil at the side of a death-bed. The newspapers pub- 
lished their Union versions of the battles outside, with 
lists of killed, wounded, and missing, until every other 
woman of the old New Orleans that walked the streets 
was in mourning. Gunboats steamed ever up and 
down the river on mj^sterious expeditions ; armies 
passed and repassed through the city, as if there were 
no end of men in the world to fight against the Con- 
federates. Tlie hospitals were filled with Confederate 
wounded, the prisons with Confederate captives. 

The Confederate women in the city (those who had 
signed Butler's register, doubly perjuring themselves) 
now worked with desperate energy, besieging provost 



316 NEW ORLEANS. 

marshals' offices, — bribing, deceiving, flattering even the 
negro sentinels on duty, — lying desperately if need be, 
to gain admittance to the prisons and hospitals ; to get 
to the pallet of a dying boy, or to help an able-bodied 
soldier to escape. And they did escape, the able-bodied 
ones, by hundreds. And news had to be sent into the 
Confederacy, and medicines and surgical instruments. 
There was one woman contrabandist who distinguished 
herself above all, a J^oung handsome Irish woman, who 
feared, as she said, naught and nobody, her confession 
once made and the sacrament received, and a package 
of medicine for the Confederates outside hidden about 
her person, if the night were only dark or stormy 
enough for her skiff to get by the sentinels and out 
into Lake Pontchartrain. Once she was sighted and 
fired into, but she rowed her twelve miles over, with 
a bullet in her leg, and got back into the city the next 
day, with her return mail. 

The surrender of the Confederacy, the end of it all, 
is the one watershed at which all good stories, voluble 
resentments, gay denunciations, and humorous self- 
confessions turn back. It is the one item of their past 
over which the women of New Orleans shed tears 

The rest is usually run into a hurried summary, one- 
sided, j)erhaps — most probably, but where there are 
two sides of a thing or a question, the other side is 
always procurable, and one tells best the side one has 
learned personally. " C'est souliers tout seuls qui savent 
si bas tini trous " is a proverb of Creole mammies which 
can be understood ; " Shoes are only called upon to 
know the holes in their own stockings." 

There was one year of simple existence and endur- 
ance of the new condition of things : negro soldiers, 



NEW ORLEANS. 317 

negro policemen, negro officials, and hired negro 
menials; with United States soldiers in garrisons all 
around about and aides-de-camp in glittering uniforms 
galloping through the streets ; and the new poverty, 
new toil and stress, changed society ; the old sense of 
ownership of the city, which the very children possessed, 
gone forever. It was a year of stupor and, as it 
seems now, of grace. And after that there is more, 
much more, to tell. It must be given here briefly. 

In 18(36, Congress enacted that no seceding state 
could be re-established in its old representative rights 
in the Union until it had reconstructed its constitu- 
tion by a ratification of the fourteenth amendment, 
making negroes citizens of the state and of the United 
States, forbidding legislation to abridge their rights 
and excluding a certain class of ex-Confederates from 
office. 

As such a reconstruction was optional, but one of 
the Conlederate States availed itself of the privilege 
of qualifying for representation. Congress therefore 
determined upon a forced reconstruction, and by the 
"iron laws," as they have been well called, of 1867, 
put the Confederate States under military rulers, who 
Avere charged with the power and authority to work 
the machinery of constitutional government and 7'e con- 
struct the states according to tlie plans laid down. 

The vote was registered in Louisiana ; 46,218 whites 
to 84,431 negroes, and a constitutional convention was 
called. It met in what was then the Mechanics' Insti- 
tute (now old Tulane Hall). The students in the 
neighbouring Medical College and Jesuits' College, who 
were just beginning, with the happy ease of youth, to 
forget their childhood horrors of war, were startled one 



318 NEW' ORLEANS. 

day over their school-books by pistol-shots, screams, and 
cries in the streets near them. Tliose who ventured 
to look out saw a wild, infuriated mob in the streets, 
and heard the cries of a hell in the great ugly build- 
ing in front, from which negroes trying to escape were 
climbing out of windows, and over the roof, dropping 
down wounded, bleeding, dead, in the surrounding 
court. This was the beginning of reconstruction, as 
middle-aged men and women now recall it, the response 
of the whites to the test oath and governing negro vote. 
To the children of the city, trembling and anguished, 
sent home from scliool after dark, under careful escort, 
it was a never-to-be-forgotten day. It has never been 
forgotten. 

But the negro vote nevertheless remained, and the 
test oath, and behind both the coercive power of the 
triumphant army of the United States. The era of 
the " carpet bag " government set in ; the golden era 
for American enterprise, which, it may be said by an 
American, is never so brilliantly displayed as in politics. 

With an iron-clad oath barring every state and 
federal office, every court of justice, every jury, with 
the whole machinery of government framed for the one 
purpose of kee})ing them in power, with a registered 
vote of 84,000 negroes behind them, and the white 
population disfranchised into civil impotence, with the 
United States army always garrisoning their polling 
places, counting their votes and doing police duty for 
them — and with a returning board of their own to 
certify their elections, it is impossible to conceive of 
a more perfect millenium for the aspiring Republi- 
can politicians of the day- — and they recognized it. 
Crowds, carpet bag in hand, flocked from North, East, 



NE]V ORLEANS. 319 

and West ; hundreds, nay thousands, liad not even to 
travel to it ; sokliers disbanded from the army one day 
became political leaders the next, stepping into office 
and fortune the following week. An ex-soldier became 
governor of the state, with a negro lieutenant-governor, 
and so on, black and white, Union soldiers and ne- 
groes, through every department down to the end. 
There was no end to the offices, nor to the office seek- 
ers for contracts, awards, monopolies, and grants and 
privileges carried what should have been the end of 
patronage or greed, — around to the governor again ; 
and so, the fingers of one touching the palm of the other, 
the circle was completed. The state debt was increased 
over forty millions of dollars. To quote a recent pub- 
lication : 1 

" The wealth of Louisiana made the state a special temptation 
to carpet-baggers. Between 1800 and 1871 taxes had risen four 
hundred and fifty per cent. Before the war, a session of the legis- 
lature cost from |100,000 to $200,000 ; in 1871 the regular session 
cost $900,000. Judge Black considered it ' safe to say that a gen- 
eral conflagration, sweeping over all the state, from one end to the 
other, and destroying every building and every article of personal 
property, would have been a visitation of mercy in comparison to 
tlie curse of such a government.' This statement is not extrava- 
gant if his other assertion is correct, that during the ten years pre- 
ceding 1876, New Orleans paid in the form of direct taxes more 
than the estimated value of all the property within her limits in 
the year named, and still had a debt of equal amount unpaid." 

The old St. Louis hotel became the state house. 
George Augustus Sala, not then, but later, when affairs 

1 "A History of the Last Quarter Century in the United States," 
E. Benjamin Andrews, Scribner's Monthly, March-June, 1895. The 
author, in the foregoing and following, is indebted to these articles 
for much beside the quotation. 



320 NEW ORLEANS. 

were much improved, visited tlie House of Represent- 
atives assembled in the ball-room, and describes the 
forlorn appearance of the colossal pile which had once 
been the resort, as he says, of wealthy planters, their 
stately spouses and their beautiful and accomplished 
daughters. . . . "Wherever you turned, the spirit of 
dismalness seemed to have laid its hand. . . . New 
Orleans, I have more than once remarked, offers among 
all American cities pre-eminently a feast of picturesque 
form and bright and varied colour to European eyes; but 
within the walls of the state house a universal mono- 
chrome pitilessly reigns, or rather the negation of all 
colour — black and white. But I was aroused from my 
reverie by the voice of a gentleman who was addressing 
the house. It was somewhat of a variable and capri- 
cious voice, at one time hoarse and rasping, at another 
shrilly treble, and the orator ended his periods now 
with a sound resembling a chuckle, and now with one 
as closely akin to a grunt. So far — being rather hard 
of hearing — as I could make out, the honourable legis- 
lator was remarking : ' Dat de genlm from de parish 
of St. Quelquechose was developing assertions and 
expurgating ratiocinations clean agin de fust principles 
of law and equity,' upon whicli the orator sat down. 
. . . What was the precise mode of catching the 
speaker's eye I could not exactly discern, for more 
than one honourable gentleman seemed to be on his 
legs at the same time. When the contingency seemed 
to be imminent of everybody's addressing the house 
at once, the dull measured sound of the presi- 
dent's hammer, or ' gavel,' as in Masonic parlance the 
implement of order is called, was audible. Ere the 
orator who had apostrophized the gentleman from St. 



NEW ORLEANS. 321 

Quelquecliose had resumed his seat, I had ample time 
to make a study of his facial outline, for there was a 
window close behind him, against which his profile was 
defined as sharply as in one of those old black sil- 
houette portraits which they used to take for sixpence 
on the old chain pier at Brighton. The honourable 
legislator had a fully developed Ethiopian physiog- 
nomy, but when he sat down I found that in hue he 
was only a mulatto. There were more coloured mem- 
bers in the house, some of them ' bright ' mulattoes and 
quadroons, very handsome and distinguished look- 
ing. ... A Southern gentleman pointed out to us 
one of the coloured representatives who, prior to the 
war, had been his, the gentleman's, slave and body- 
servant." . . . 

The returning board appointed by the governor to 
go over the returns as they came from the commission- 
ers at the polls and count the votes, decided, and it 
might be said awarded, the elections, or, as the people 
called it, counted in the candidates. Every year the 
test oath became less prohibitive, white youths attain- 
ing their majority and political disabilities being re- 
moved from elders by the pardoning power of the 
United States. To liberate the state from the machin- 
ery of negro and carpet-bag government, to put an end 
to the plundering of public finances, and to the making 
of laws and the distorting of courts of justice into polit- 
ical copartnerships with the ruling powers, and to free 
themselves from the military tutelage forced upon them, 
became the absorbing ambition of every Southern voter 
in the Southern state. This ambition effaced the issues 
of the war and the grinding necessities of the moment, 
and it united the men into a " Solid South," which 



322 NEW ORLEANS. 

was the Confederate postscriptum of the war, to meet 
the Federal postscriptum of reconstruction ; and the 
children, as they grew, grew into solidity against the 
military and civil tyranny over their country. In 
tlie passionate fervour of young hearts, they saw them- 
selves as a generation consecrated by parental blood 
and ruin and desolation to the holy service of redeem- 
ing the South from negro supremacy, and removing 
her neck, as they said then, from under the foot of her 
conqueror. This was the generation who had not 
fought but who were old enough to have seen the mis- 
ery of their parents through defeat. It was such a 
generation, under the leadership of the old soldiers and 
the great hero generals of the war, that the reconstruc- 
tionists attempted to reconstructo In New Orleans 
the inherent political irascibility of the people made 
the place a volcano of political passion. The carpet- 
bag and negro party, desj^ite its superior military and 
political power, saw itself becoming hopelessly over- 
matched by the civil and social power organized against 
it ; and, as in every other community in the South, the 
Southern whites and the negroes trembled on the brink 
of a racial war. 

Meanwhile, the reconstructionists quarrelled among 
themselves over the spoils, according to the monoto- 
nously regular experience of spoilsmen. The leaders 
— carpet-baggers no longer — over-rich in every form 
of wealth that Louisiana could give or negro votes 
legislate to them ; lands, bonds, and cash, monopolies 
and trusts, excited the jealousy of adherents in their 
own class and the distrust of the negroes. 

Our authority previously quoted heads his account 
of what followed: "Anarchy in Louisiana." 



NEW ORLEANS. 323 

To borrow his succinct statement ^ of the facts and of 
the resultant situations : — 

"The election of 1870 gave Louisiana to the Republicans by a 
substantial majority, but almost immediately the party began to 
break up into factions. The governor was opposed by the leading 
federal officers, who succeeded in gaining control of the Repub- 
lican state convention. . . . On the death, during the previous 
year, of the coloured lieutenant-governor, a coloured adherent of 
the governor had been elected president of the Senate, but the Ad- 
ministration leaders declared his election illegal. . . . There was 
a bitter struggle in the House, during which the governor and a 
number of his supporters were arrested by the federal authori- 
ties; and the speaker was deposed. A congressional committee 
investigated the quarrel, but could not quiet it. . . . 

" Tlie governor and his coloured president of the Senate became 
estranged ; the governor headed a Liberal Republican movement, 
wliicli after much manreiivring united with the Democratic party 
in a fusion ticket. The coloured president of the Senate was nomi- 
nated for congressman-at-large by the Republicans, whose ticket 
was headed by a new carpet-bag candidate for governor. 

" The result of the election was hotly disputed. Two returning 
boards existed — one favouring the governor, the other the col- 
oured politician's ticket. The governor's board declared his ticket 
elected by seven thousand majority ; the coloured politician's board 
declared his ticket elected by nearly nineteen thousand majority: 
and each board made up its own list of members for the legis- 
lature." . . • 

The members of the two Legislatures arrived in the 
city, determined to meet. At midnight, before the day 
appointed for meeting, the Republican leaders secured 
from a federal judge an order enjoining the Liberal 
legislators from meeting, and directing the United 
States marshal to take possession of the state house. 

1 Not entii'ely verbatim ; designations have been substituted for 
proper names, and some sentences slightly changed, in order to com- 
pass necessary abbreviations. 



324 NEW ORLEANS. 

President Grant favoured the coloured Republicans' 
claimants and ordered the federal troops to support 
him. On the morning of the day for the meeting 
of the legislature, a federal officer, therefore, stood 
at the door of the state house with a list in his hand, 
and admitted only those members permitted by the 
midnight order. A week later both governors took 
their oath of office. A congressional committee inves- 
tigated the dispute. It found that the Liberal candi- 
date was entitled to the government de jure, but that 
the Republican candidate, supported by the army, was 
de facto governor, a re-election was recommended. 
The recommendation, very naturally, Avas not adopted 
by the Washington executive. The Liberal governor 
and his supporters strongly protested against this de- 
cision, and although submitting to federal authority 
and deprived of power, retained their organization as 
a de jure government. 

The campaign of 1874 was inaugurated. In Sep- 
tember the registration offices were thrown open. The 
usual multiplication of negro registration papers fol- 
lowed, with the usual difficulties and impediments 
thrown in the way of white voters. The Republican 
governor had provided himself with a local army of 
his own, a body of metropolitan police, mostly negroes, 
paid by the city of New Orleans, but under his personal 
command and forming a part of his militia. Over 
against this force the citizens had organized themselves 
into a militia of their own, a "White League," with 
military organization, drill, and discipline. 

The metropolitan })olice were armed with breech- 
loading rifles supplied by the United States, as the 
state's quota of arms. The White League, save a 



NEW OBLEANS. 325 

few fowling-pieces and pistols, was practically without 
arms. The governor's attempt to prevent the White 
League from arming itself precipitated the struggle. 
An order was issued forbidding the citizens to bear 
arms or keep them in their houses ; the police disarmed 
the citizens when arms were detected upon them, and 
houses were searched. In the first week of Septem- 
ber two boxes of second-hand rifles were seized by 
tlie Metropolitans as they were being conveyed to a 
gun store. The owners claimed their property, and 
instituting legal proceedings obtained a decision from 
the court in their favour. The chief of police, ordered 
to surrender the guns, refused. Threatened with i)un- 
ishment for contempt, he produced a pardon signed in 
advance by the governor. The attorney-general of 
the state, by virtue of a statute of the reconstruction 
legislature, against a crime defined as state treason, 
arrested and held the owners of the guns. Other guns 
were seized in a gun store, and another attempt was 
made to seize a shipment by rail. 

On Sunday, September 13, a steamer was expected 
with a supply of arms for the citizens. On Saturday 
night a large force of police, armed with Springfield 
rifles and one cannon, was stationed at the landing to 
seize the arms wlien they arrived^ Monday a mass 
meeting was called at Clay's statue to protest against 
the seizure of the guns and assert the right of the citi- 
zens to keep and bear arms. The streets and side- 
walks were filled for several squares, and there was a 
general suspension of business. A committee was 
appointed to wait upon the governor and request him 
to abdicate. He had fled from the executive office to 
the custom house, a great citadel, garrisoned at that 



326 NEW ORLEANS. 

time by United States troops. From his retreat he 
sent word declining to entertain any communication 
with the citizens. Their leaders tlien advised them to 
get arms and return to assist the White League in exe- 
cuting plans that would be arranged. 

About three o'clock the White League, mustering 
eight hundred men, formed on Poydras street, from St. 
Charles street to the levee. A company was stationed 
at St. Charles and Canal streets ; the street crossings to 
Canal street were barricaded with overturned cars. 
The Supreme Court building had been turned into an 
arsenal for the Metroj)olitans. They formed in Jack- 
son square, six hundred and fifty men with six cannon, 
two Catling guns, three Napoleons, and a howitzer. A 
force of six hundred of them held the state house. 
The report arriving that the citizens were in march to 
the steamship to protect the landing of their guns, five 
hundred Metropolitans, under command of the chief of 
police, were marclied, with the cannon, to Canal street 
and halted in front of the custom house, and their 
cannon pointed toward St. Charles street. The main 
body of them, with three cannon, then advanced to the 
levee and took their station there. Upon this, three 
companies of the White League moved out Poydras 
street to the levee, and took their position opposite the 
Metropolitans. The Metropolitans opened fire with 
their cannon and rifles. The White League attempted 
to reply with their one cannon, but it worked unsatis- 
factorily. Abandoning it, two companies advanced 
rapidly down the river bcink, and under cover of the 
piled-up freight fired upon the Metropolitans at the 
cannon, with such effect that the negroes among them 
wavered and retreated. One of their Catling guns was 



NEW ORLEANS. 



327 



turned to fire upon the levee. Taking advantage of the 
confusion among tlie Metropolitans and the lull in their 
firing the White League at Poydras street made a dash 
down the open levee and charged the battery. The 
Metropolitans broke and fled behind the custom house, 
abandoning their guns and leaving the chief of police 
wounded on the ground. 
A rally was made, and 
desultory fighting con- 
tinued in the streets for 
a short while, but in 
an hour all was over. 
When the Metropoli- 
tans returned to their 
arsenal, but sixty or sev- 
enty remained of the 
army of the morning. 
Fearful of the vengeance 
of the citizens, they 
had thrown down 
their arms, torn off 
their uniforms, and 
escaped to hiding- 
places. It was never 
known how many 
were killed ; the pub- 
lished account ac- 
knowledges fifteen killed and seventy-five wounded. 
The citizens lost sixteen. 

The next morning the state house was in the cit- 
izens' hands ; two hours later the whole Metropoli- 
tan force surrendered, the barricades were torn down, 
the street cars resumed their trips. The coup d'etat 




■^'91 









328 NEW ORLEANS. 

roused delirious enthusiasm throughout the state. The 
Democratic officials were everywhere installed in 
office. The Democratic governor had now repaired 
the flaw in his title. He was de facto as well as de jure 
governor of the state. As the three thousand citizens 
marched by the custom house to install their govern- 
ment, the United States troops crowded the windows 
and gave them three hearty cheers. 

But the triumph was cut short. President Grant 
commanded the insurgents, as he called them, to dis- 
perse in five days ; troops were ordered to New Or- 
leans, gunboats were anchored in the river, their guns 
aimed to sweep the streets of the city. The military 
commander received positive orders under no circum- 
stances to recognize the citizens' governor ; United 
States soldiers, in default of the Metropolitans, policed 
the streets. The Republican governor issued from his 
asylum of the custom house and resumed his office. 
The citizens submitted even cheerfully. They had 
proved their point ; the carpet-bag government could 
be placed and kept in power by the United States 
soldiery, and in no other way wliatever. The citizens 
who fell were honoured 'with the obsequies of patriot 
martyrs. A monument has since been erected to their 
memory on Liberty place where the Metropolitans' can- 
non stood. On the 14th of September — considered 
after the 8th of January the proudest date of New 
Orleans — their graves are decorated, and the local 
journals and orators never pass the commemoration ])y 
without those words of praise and gratitude which 
would seem to be the noblest and only pension for true 
patriots. 
The election of 1874 passed quietly. The Demo- 



NEW ORLEANS. 329 

cratic success was a foregone conclusion. The return- 
ing board, with its usual manipulations of counting out 
and counting in, gave the treasury to the Republicans 
and allowed them a majority of two in the legislature, 
leaving five seats contested. After recounting instances 
of illegal action and fraud on the part of the returning 
board, the Democratic committee issued an address to 
the people of the United States : — 

" We, the down-trodden people of once free Louisiana, now call 
upon the people of the free states of America, if you would your- 
selves remain free and retain the right of self-government, to 
demand in tones that cannot be misunderstood or disregarded, 
that the shackles be stricken from Louisiana, and that the power 
of the United States army may no longer be used to keep a horde 
of adventurers in power." 

The congressional investigating committee "unani- 
mously found itself constrained to declare that the 
action of the returning board was arbitrary, unjust, and 
illegal." Nevertheless a few days before the assem- 
bling of the legislature. General Grant put General 
Sheridan in command of tlie department. The legisla- 
ture convened on January 4th. As our authority states, 
the events of that day were memorable and unprece- 
dented. " The state house was filled and surrounded 
by Metropolitans and federal soldiers, and no one was 
permitted to enter save by the Republican governor's 
orders. The clerk of the preceding house called the 
assembly to order. Fifty Democrats and fifty-two Re- 
publicans answered to their names. A Democratic 
temporary chairman was nominated ; the clerk inter- 
posed some objection, but the Conservative members 
disregarding him, the motion was put and declared 
carried by a viva voce vote. The chairman sprang to 



330 NEW ORLEANS. 

the platform, pushed the clerk (a negro) aside, and 
seized the gavel. A justice then swore the members in 
671 bloc ... a new clerk was elected, also a sergeant- 
at-arms : then, from among gentlemen who had secured 
admittance, assistant sergeants-at-arms were appointed. 
. . . The five contesting Democrats were admitted 
and sworn in. The Republicans now attempted to 
adopt their opponents' tactics • . . but the organi- 
zation of the house was completed by the Demo- 
crats. . . . Pistols were drawn, and the disorder grew 
so great that the federal colonel in command was re- 
quested to insist upon order. This he did. . . . The 
house proceeded with the election of minor offices. . . . 
At length the federal colonel received word from the 
liepublican governor, which his general orders bound 
him to obey, to remove the five members sworn in but 
not returned by the board. The speaker refusing to 
point them out, a Republican member did so, and in 
spite of protests they were forcibly removed by federal 
soldiers. The Democratic speaker then left the house, 
at the head of the Conservative members; the Republi- 
cans remaining, organized to suit themselves." 

General Sheridan reported the matter, as his war 
reputation Avarranted that he should. He suggested 
that Congress or the President should declare the lead- 
ers of the White League banditti, so that he could 
try them by military commission. A public protest of 
indignation arose from the city. All the exchanges 
and the Northern and Western merchants and residents 
of the city passed resolutions denying the truth of the 
federal general's report, and, in an appeal to the nation, 
a number of New Orleans clergymen condemned it as 
" unmerited, unfounded, and erroneous. " 



NEW ORLEANS. 



331 



A special congressional committee investigated the 
affair. It effected a " readjustment " by which the state 
was given to the Republican governor, but the decision 
of the returning board was reversed by seating twelve 
of the contestants excluded by it. 

The last act of the reconstruction drama was the 
election of 1876, when the returning boards of three 
Southern states threw out enough Democratic votes to 
give the states to the Republican candidate for Presi- 
dent ; but in Louisiana the state was, as it was called, 
returned to the Louisianians, and they, for the first 
time since 1862, entered into possession of the govern- 
ment. 

President Hayes withdrawing the federal sujDport, 
the carpet-bag government collapsed. 








I ' i<r'' 






^' [_ouib Qeneterv. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE CONVENT OF THE HOLY FAMILY. 

TT ei)itomizes a great section of the city's past, this 
-L Convent of the Holy Family. And in no other place 
of the city do the heart and the mind seem to be work- 
ing together so reverently to spell from its past indica- 
tions for its future. And, it would seem, in no other 
place to the historian, sociologist, or may we simply 
say humanitarian, does the future appear, not so bright, 
not so purely hopeful, but so providentially directed as 
in this institution. 

It was on New Year's day, 1888, that the news spread 
through the community that the Mother Superior of 
the Coloured Convent of the Holy Family was dead. 
It was an occasion for the inquisitive to satisfy curios- 
ity, as well as for the friends and well-wishers of the 

332 



NEW ORLEANS. 333 

convent to pay the respect of a call ; for those of the 
Catholic faith to do more. 

The body had not yet been transported to the chapel. 
She lay on the cot on which she had died a few hours 
before. Can one ever forget the sight ? So small, so 
shrunken, so withered, such a mummy of a human 
figure, with a face, under the glitter of the burning 
candles, so yellow, Avrinkled, sunken, so devitalized, so 
dehumanized, of all the elements of earthly passions. 
All around the bed were kneeling figures f]-om the 
street, from the market, servants, beggars, sisters, or- 
phans, and white ladies, the latter predominating, not 
by their number but by the elegance and distinction 
they cast over the assemblage. It was the time and the 
opportunity of all others to ask who Avas she, this 
Mother Juliette — and what is this Convent of the 
Holy Family ? 

During the micien regime in Louisiana, the pure- 
blooded African was never called coloured, but always 
negro. The gens de couleur, coloured people, were a 
class apart, separated from and superior to the negroes, 
ennobled, were it by only one drop of white blood in 
their veins. The caste seems to have existed from 
the first introduction of slaves. To the whites, all 
Africans who were not of pure blood were ge7is 
de couleur. Among themselves, however, there were 
jealous and fiercely guarded distinctions ; mulattoes, 
quadroons, octoroons, griffes, each term meaning one 
more generation's elevation, one degree's further trans- 
figuration in the standard of racial perfection ; white 
blood. It was not a day of advanced science or moral- 
ity in any part of the European world, and it must be 
remembered that New Orleans was, until recent years, 



334 



NEW ORLEANS. 



a part of the European world, not of tlie American. 
Crudely put, to the black CUiristian, God was a white 
man, the devil black ; the Virgin Mary, the Saviour, the 
saints and angels, all belonged to the race of tlie mas- 
ter and mistress ; white, divinized ; black, diabolized. 
Is it necessary to follow, except in imagination, the inli- 

nite hope, the infinite 
struggle, contained in 
the inference ? 

From the first ap- 
pearance of gens de 
couleur in the colony, 
dates the class, gens de 
couleur litres. By the 
census of 1788, their 
number amounted to 
fifteen hundred, and in 
the same year their 
aspirations began to be 
noticed. An excessive 
attention to dress, on 
the part of a mulattress 
or quadroon, was con- 
sidered, according to 
an ordinance of Governor Miro, " an evidence of mis- 
conduct, which made her liable to punishment." A 
woman of that class was forbidden to wear jewels and 
plumes, and ordered to cover her hair with a kerchief, 
called by the Creoles a "-tignon." They were also for- 
bidden to have nightly assemblies. 

These ge^is de couleur re[)resent the first crest of tlie 
waves as the tide bears them in to curl rippling over 
the beach at our feet ; but the eye involuntarily looks 




NEW ORLEANS. 335 

further out, to tlie expanse beyond, the great black, 
mysterious mass, the race, out of which the tide comes 
to us. It is at first sight but a black, mysterious mass 
of brute labour, brought in shiploads, by brute capital, 
so to speak ; the huddling, reeking, diseased, desperate 
catchings of a naked black humanity, without a fila- 
ment of the clothing, language, or religion of the white 
humanity above them. Out of the inchoate blackness 
individual experience alone could make assortment and 
classification ; features, expression, size, and the doctor's 
certilicate were the quotable values at first, until Ban- 
baras, Congoes, and smaller tribes became known, and 
figured on change. The damaged lots, the crippled and 
infirm, were sold for a trifle, and these bargains Avere 
eagerly seized upon by the poorer classes, so that a poor 
man's slave was not the mere term of social reproach 
which it is supposed to be. 

The negroes made their own segregations on the 
plantations. They are described as singing in unison 
in the fields; incoherent, unintelligible words, in one 
recurring, monotonous, short strain of harmony, eddy- 
ing around a minor chord, as they may in fact be heard 
in any field or street gang to-day. In the winter, when 
they were clad in their long capots of blanket, with 
the hood drawn over the head, they looked like a 
monastery of monks in the field ; their shoes, called 
" quantiers," were pieces of raw-hide, cut so as to lace 
comfortably over foot and ankle. 

These were the first cargoes, the African bi-uts, as 
they were called, going through their first rudiments of 
religion, language, and civilized training. Le Page du 
Pratz gives interesting information as to the j)roper 
management of them in this stage. The whites' fear 



336 



NEW ORLEANS. 



of insurrection, prevented, it ; every plantation was a 
camp ; the discipline maintained was military, and 
military as it was understood and practised at tliat 
day. The one serious uprising of slaves in the history 
of the state took place when this patriarchal, despotic 
system had given place to the easy-going American 
regime. The evolution of these barbarians into skilled 




labourers and Christian men and women was miracu- 
lously rapid ; a generation sufficing to overleap centu- 
ries of normal development, to differentiate succeeding 
hrut arrivals in the colony from one another by de- 
grees of superiority and progress, mentally and physi- 
cally, which can only be tabulated by using, as the 
negroes themselves did, shades of colour as expres- 
sions of measurement. The minute paternalism of the 



NEW ORLEANS. 337 

French and Spanish domestic systems was peculiarly 
favourable to such development ; the harmonious 
results from it can still be traced in the families of 
Spanish and French coloured Creoles ; tliey themselves 
base aristocratic pretensions upon their French and 
Spanish antecedents, and at the time were the first to 
despise and contemn the laxer regime of the American 
domestic service. 

One of their field songs which they sang in the early 
part of the century commemorates the feeling. D'Ar- 
taguette was a royal comptroller and connnandant at 
Mobile in the time of Bienville: — 

" Di temps Missie d'Artaguette, 

He! Ho! He! 
C'etait, c'etait bon temps ! 
Ye te menin monde h la baguette^ 

He ! Ho ! He ! 
Pas Negres, pas rubans, 

Pas diamants 
Pour dochans, 

He ! Ho ! He ! " 

(" In the time of Monsieur d'Artaguette, it was, it was a good 
time I The world was led with a stick. No negroes, no ribbons, 
no diamonds for [^dochans — des gens] common people.") 

They improvised their songs as they went along, as 
children do; picking up any little circumstance in the 
life about them, and setting it afloat on the rill of music 
that seemed to be ever runninaf throuefh the virgin 
forest of their brain. And their language, known only 
through the ear, became itself a fluent doggerel of har- 
mony ; the soft French and Spanish words, with the 
consonants filtered out by the tliick, inoist, sensitive lips, 
falling in vov^el cadences, link upon link, hour after 



338 NEW ORLEANS. 

hour, through the longest day's hardest task. Their 
songs, their music, their patois, still remain to soothe 
children to sleep ; to lighten the burdensome hour, and 
to fill many a lazy one ; and how little could it all be 
spared from the life of the place ! And in fact, how 
much of the noted events of the old life of the place do 
the songs preserve for us ; Master Cayetane, who came 
from la Havane to Congo square with a circus (a 
dozen stanzas of wonders) ; the battle of New Orleans ; 
the fine balls, the names of masters and mistresses and 
police ofiicers; and always the biting sarcasms about 
the free quadroons and the mulattoes whom they called 
"mules"; the rogueries of this scamp, the airs and 
graces of that one, and a whole repertoire of garbled 
versions of love and drinking-songs picked up from the 
masters' table, as now they pick up politics and busi- 
ness gossip. Under the ancien regime, it was a fa- 
vourite after-dinner entertainment to have the slaves 
come in and sing, rewarding them wdth glasses of wine 
and silver pieces. Louis Philippe (that ever glorious 
and approjjriate Louisiana menior}') was thus enter- 
tained. It seems almost impossible for a true child of 
New Orleans to speak without emotion of the Creole 
songs, they run such a gamut of local sentiment and 
love, from the past to the present. And as for the Creole 
music, it is quite permissible to say it in New Orleans, 
that no one has ever known the full poetry and inspira- 
tion of the dance who has not danced to the original 
music of a Macarty or a Basile Bares. And it is a 
pleasure to own the conviction, wliether it can be main- 
tained or not, with reason, that America will one day 
do homage for music of a fine and original type, to 
some representative of Louisiana's coloured population. 



NEW OliLEANS. 339 

No relation of the city in the first quarter of the cen- 
tury is complete without Elizabeth, or " Zabet Philo- 
sophe," who was as much a part of the vieux carre 
as the Cabihlo was. She always maintained her age 
at the current standard of a hundred. She was born in 
tlie house of the widow of an officer who had served 
under Bienville ; and, a pet of her mistress, had been 
freed by will, and since then had made her living as 
hairdresser to the aristocratic ladies in the city, her 
last patron being Madame Laussat. No Frenchman in 
the community suffered more than she did when the 
French flag was lowered to the American. She wept 
bitterly. Being told that the new government had pro- 
claimed that all white men were free and equal, she 
ceased to be a menial, and took to selling pralines on 
tlie steps of the cathedral, or under the porch of the 
Cabildo, where she could see her friends, the judges 
and lawyers, as they passed on their way to court ; and 
they seldom failed to loiter around her tray to j)i"OVoke 
from her the shrewd comments, piquante stories and 
picturesque tales which won her the surname of Pliilo- 
sophe. She could neither read nor write, but she spoke 
pure, elegant French, as the court of the Grand INIo- 
narque did, by ear, and to her blue-blooded patrons she 
used her best language and all the higli-flown courtesy 
of the old regime, and was profuse in well-set phrases 
of thanks when their silver pieces fell in her tray ; com- 
mon customers she treated with careless indifference. 
When court and cathedral closed, she would take up 
her place in the Place d' Amies, and pass the evening 
promenaders in review, recalling aloud this about their 
parents and grandparents, reminding them of one story 
and another, complimenting the ladies and petting the 



340 J^EW ORLEANS. 

children of her ohl people, as she called them. General 
Jackson, in 1815, shook hands with her and gave her a 
dollar. She was very pious at that time, but tradition 
hinted that she had not been pre-eminently so when 
she was young ; to be reminded of this, however, only 
called a good-natured laugh to her face. "Why not? 
Pleasure and balls when one is young, church and 
prayer when one is old; that's my philosophy." 

The great holiday place for the slaves in those days 
was Congo square, then well outside the city limits. 
People are yet living who remember what a gala day 
Sunday was to tlie negroes, and with what keen antici- 
pations they looked forward to it. On a bright after- 
noon they would gather in their gay, ^picturesque finery, 
by hundreds, even thousands, under the shade of the 
sycamores, to dance the Bamboula or the Calinda; the 
music of their Creole songs tuned by the beating of 
the tam-tam. " Dansez Calinda! Badoum! Badoum! " 
the children, dancing too on the outskirts, adding their 
screams and romping to the chorus and movement. 
A bazaar of refreshments filled the sidewalks around ; 
lemonade, ginger beer, pies, and the ginger cakes called 
" estomac mulattre," set out on deal tables, screened 
with cotton awnings, whose variegated streamers danced 
also in the breeze. White people would promenade by 
to look at the scene, and the young gentlemen from the 
College of Orleans, on their way to the theatre, always 
stopped a moment to see the negroes dance "Congo." 
At nightfall the frolic ceased, the dispersed revellers 
singing on their way home to another week of slavery 
and labour : " Bonsoir, dans^, Soleil, couche! " 

A word, " Voudou," changes the gay, careless Sunday 
scene into its diabolic counterpart, a witches' sabbat, the 



NEW ORLEANS. 341 

evening to midnight, the open square to hidden obscure 
corners, the dancers to bacchanals ; the gay, frank 
music to a weird chanting, subtly imitative of the 
yearning sighing of the wind that precedes the tropical 
storm ; rising and swelling to the full explosion of the 
tempest. Among the African slaves, under any appli- 
cations or assumptions of Christianity, there was always 
Voudou superstition, lying dormant, with their past, 
but in the early days of slavery there was little chance 
or opportunity to practise the rites of Voudouism, as 
they were called. Their formal introduction in the city 
can be plausibly traced to the immigrant St. Domingo 
slaves. The accessories and ceremonies followed the 
description given of Voudou meetings in the West 
Indian Islands. There was the same secrecy of place 
and meeting, the altar, serpent, and the oflicial king 
and queen; the latter with much profusion of red in her 
dress, the oath to the serpent; a string of barbarous 
epithets and penalties, the suppliants to the serpent 
coming up, one by one, with their prayers, always and 
ever for love or revenge, the king with his hand on the 
serpent, receiving from it the trembling of the body 
which he communicates to the queen, and which she 
passes on to all in the room ; the trembling increasing 
to movement ; the movement, to contortions of the body, 
convulsions, frenzy, ecstacies, the queen ever leading ; 
the low humming song rising louder and louder ; the 
dancers whirling around, faster and faster, screaming, 
waving tlieir red handkerchiefs, tearing off their gar- 
ments, biting their flesh, falling down delirious, ex- 
hausted, pell mell, blind, inebriated, in the hot dense 
darkness; — when the sheer lassitude of consciousness 
returns with daylight, retaining but one thing firmly 



342 NEW ORLEANS. 

fixed in their minds, the date of the next meeting. An 
attempt of recent years to revive the annual Voudou 
celebrations, on St. John's Eve, with nothing of the old 
rites preserved but the dance, has been rigidly sup- 
pressed by the police authorities. The last Voudou 
queen, dead within the decade, was still an object of 
popular terror and superstition, and there are yet 
secret dispensers in the city, of Voudou magic ; the 
black and white pepper, chicken feathers and minute 
bone combinations that still are used to charm love or 
send sure revenge of death ; and there is still more 
belief in Voudouism amoiig ignorant blacks and whites 
than one likes to confess. 

Besides the white and slave immigrations from the 
West Indian Islands, there was a large influx of free 
gens de couleiir into the city, a class of population 
whose increase by immigration had been sternly legis- 
lated against. Flying, however, with the whites from 
massacre and ruin, humanitarian sentiments induced 
the authorities to open the city gates to them, and they 
entered by thousands. Like the white emigres., they 
brought in the customs and manners of a softer climate, 
a more luxurious society, and a different civilization. 
In comparison with the free coloured people of New 
Orleans, they represented a distinct variety, a variety 
which their numbers made important, and for a time 
decisive in its influence on the home of their adoption. 

The very thought of Miro's regulations seems absurd, 
as we hear of them in their boxes at the Orleans thea- 
tre, rivalling the white ladies in the tier below them, 
with their diamonds, Parisian head-dresses, and elegant 
toilets ; and of the tropical splendour with which they 
shone at their weekly balls. These were the celebrated 



NEW ORLEANS. 



343 



quadroon balls, that divided the nights t)f the week 
with the balls given to the white ladies, where none 
but white men were allowed, and where strange gentle- 
men were always taken, as to the amusement par excel- 
lence in the city. Robin, in 1804, remarked slily, as we 
have seen, that the gentlemen of New Orleans society 
were fond of seeking distractions elsewhere than in 




their own sphere, so that the brilliancj^ of their balls 
was much diminished by the number of ladies con- 
demned to be wall-flowers. And the travellers after 
him, with the licensed indiscretion of travellers, write 
admiringly of the piquante fascinations of these enter- 
tainments. The Duke of Saxe- Weimar confesses him- 
self not indifferent to the tempting contrast offered by 



344 NEW OB LEANS. 

tlie two balls only a few blocks apart, and lie constantly 
notes in his Journal how he, in the interests of science 
or amusement, flitted between them. He writes, that the 
quadroon women who frequented these balls appeared 
almost white and that from their skins no one would 
detect their origin ; they dressed well and gracefully, 
conducted themselves with perfect propriety and mod- 
esty, and were all the time under the eyes of their 
mothers. Some of them possessed handsome fortunes, 
but their position in the community was most humil- 
iating. They regarded negroes and mulattoes with 
unmixed contempt. Of a quadroon masquerade at the 
Theatre St. Philippe, that he left a white soiree to 
visit, the Duke says: " Several of them " (the quadroon 
ladies) "addressed me and coquetted with me in the 
most subtle and amusing manner." To an English 
traveller, the quadroon women were "tlie most beautiful 
he had ever seen, resembling the higher order of women 
among the high class Hindoos : lovely countenances, 
full, dark, liquid eyes, lips of coral, teeth of pearl, sylph- 
like features, and such beautifully rounded limbs and 
exquisite gait and manners that they might furnish 
models for a Venus or a Hebe." Those brilliant balls, 
in their way, are as incredible now as the slave marts 
and the Voudou dances ; which, in their way, they seem 
subtly, indissolubly connected with. 

Tlie free coloured men, per contra., were retiring, 
modest, and industrious. The following notes are taken 
from an unpublished manuscript of Charles Gayarre on 
the subject: — 

" By 1830, some of these gens de couleur had arrived at such a 
degree of wealth as to own cotton and sugar plantations with 
numerous slaves. They educated their children, as they had been 



NEW ORLEANS. 345 

educated, in France. Those who chose tc remain there, attained, 
many of them, distinction in scientific and literary circles. In 
New Orleans they became musicians, merchants, and money and 
real estate brokers. The humbler classes were mechanics ; they 
monopolized the trade of shoemakers, a trade for which, even to 
this day, they have a special vocation ; they were barbers, tailors, 
carpenters, upholsterers. They were notably successful hunters 
and supplied the city with game. As tailors, they were almost 
exclusively patronized by the elite, so much so that the Legoasters', 
the Dumas', the Clovis', the Lacroix', acquired individually fort- 
unes of several hundred thousands of dollars. Tliis class was most 
respectable ; they generally married women of their own status, 
and led lives quiet, dignified and worthy, in homes of ease and 
comfort. A few who had reached a competency sufficient for it, 
attempted to settle in France, where there was no prejudice 
against their origin ; but in more than one case the experiment 
was not satisfactory, and they returned to their former homes in 
Louisiana. When astonishment was expressed, they would reply, 
with a smile : ' It is hard for one who has once tasted the Missis- 
sippi to keep away from it.' 

"In fact, the quadroons of Louisiana have always shown a 
strong local attachment, although in the state they were subjected 
to grievances, which seemed to them unjust, if not cruel. It is 
true, they possessed many of the civil and legal rights enjoyed by 
the whites, as to the protection of person and property ; but they 
were disqualified from political rights and social equality. But 
... it is always to be remembered that in their contact with white 
men, they did not assume that creeping posture of debasement — 
nor did the whites expect it — which has more or less been forced 
upon them in fiction. In fact, their handsome, good-natured faces 
seem almost incapable of despair. It is true the whites were supe- 
rior to them, but they, in their turn, were superior, and infinitely 
superior, to the blacks, and had as much objection to associating 
with the blacks on terms of equality as any white man could have 
to associating with them. At the Orleans theatre they attended 
their mothers, wives, and sisters in the second tier, reserved 
exclusively for them, and where no white person of either sex 
would have been permitted to intrude. But they were not ad- 
mitted to the quadroon balls, and when white gentlemen visited 



346 NEW OB LEANS. 

theii- families it was the accepted etiquette for them never to be 
present. 

"Nevertheless it must not be imagined that the amenities 
were not observed when the men of the races met, for business 
or otherwise ,- many anecdotes are told to illustrate tliis. The 
wealthy owner of a large sugar plantation lived in a parish where 
resided also a rich, highly educated sugar planter of mixed 
blood, a man who had a reputation in his day for his rare and 
extensive library. Both planters met on a steamboat. When the 
hour for dinner struck, the white gentleman observed a small 
table set aside, at which his companion quietly took his place. 
Moved by this voluntary exhibition of humble acquiescence in 
the exigencies of his social position, the white gentleman, escorted 
by a friend, went over to the small table and addressed the soli- 
tary guest : ' We desire you to dine with us.' ' I am very 
grateful for your kindness, gentlemen,' was the reply, ' and I 
would cheerfully accept your invitation, but my presence at your 
tal)le, if acceptable to you, might be displeasing to others. There- 
fore, permit me to remain where I am.' 

"Another citizen, a Creole, and one of the finest representatives 
of the old population, occupying the highest social position, was 
once travelling in the country. His horses appearing tired, and he 
himself feeling the need of refreshment, he began to look around 
for some place to stop. He was just in front of a very fine, large 
plantation belonging to a man of colour, whom he knew very well, 
a polished, educated man, who made frequent visits to Paris. He 
drove unhesitatingly to the house, and, alighting, said : ' I have 
come to tax your hospitality.' ' Never shall a tax be paid more 
willingly,' was the prompt reply. ' I hope I am not too late for 
dinner.' ' For you, sir, it is never too late at my house for any- 
thing that you may desire.' A command was given ; cook and 
butler made their preparations, and dinner was announced. The 
guest noticed but one seat and one plate at the table. He 
exclaimed: 'What! Am I to dine alone?' 'I regret, sir, that 
I cannot join you, but I have already dined.' 'My friend,' 
answered his guest, with a good-natured smile on his lips, ' Per- 
mit me on tliis occasion to doubt your word, and to assure you 
that I shall order my carriage immediately and leave, without 
touching a mouthful of this appetizing menu, unless you share it 



NEW ORLEANS. 347 

with me.' The host was too much of a Chesterfield not to dine 
a second time, if courtesy or a guest required. 

" The free quadroon women of middle age were generally in 
easy circumstances, and comfortable in their mode of living. 
They owned slaves, skilful hairdressers, fine washerwomen, 
accomplished seamstresses, who brought them in a handsome 
revenue. Exjiert themselves at all kinds of needle-work, and not 
deficient in taste, some of them rose to the importance of modistes, 
and fashioned the dresses of the elegantes among the white ladies. 
IVIany of them made a specialty of making the fine linen shirts 
worn at that day by gentlemen and were paid two dollars and 
a half apiece for them, at which rate of profit a quadroon woman 
could always earn an honest, comfortable living. Besides, they 
monopolized the renting, at high prices, of funiished rooms to 
white gentlemen. This monopoly was easily obtained, for it was 
difficult to equal them in attention to their tenants, and the tenants 
indeed would have been hard to please had they not been satisfied. 
These rooms, with their large post bedsteads, immaculate linen, 
snowy mosquito bars, were models of cleanliness and comfort. In 
the morning the nicest cup of hot coffee was brought to the bed- 
side; in the evening, at the foot of tlie l)ed. there stood the never 
failing tub of fresh water with sweet-smelling towels. As land- 
ladies they were both menials and friends, and always affable and 
anxious to please. A cross one would have been a phenomenon. 
If their tenants fell ill, the old quadroons and, under their direc- 
tion, the young ones, were the best and kindest of nurses. Many 
of them, particularly those who came from St. Domingo, were 
expert in the treatment of yellow fever. Theii" honesty was pro- 
verbial." 

The desire of distinction, to rise from a lower level 
to social equality with a superior race, was implanted 
in the heart of the quadroon, as in that of all women. 
Hence an aversion on their part to marrying men of 
their own colour, and hence their relaxation and devia- 
tion from, if not their complete denial of, the code of 
morality accepted by white women, and their consequent 
adoption of a separate standard of morals for them- 



348 NEW ORLEANS. 

selves, and the forcing it upon tlie community and upon 
the men of their own colour. Assuming as a merit 
and a distinction what is universally considered in the 
civilized world a shame and disgrace by their sex, their 
training of their daughters had but one end in view. 
Unscrupulous and pitiless, by nature or circumstance, 
as one chooses to view it, and secretly still claiming 
the racial license of Africa, they were, in regard to 
family purity, domestic peace, and household dignity, 
the most insidious and the deadliest foes a community 
ever possessed. INIany of the quadroon belles, however, 
attained honourable marriage, and, removing to France, 
obtained full social recognition for themselves and their 
children. 

The great ambition of the unmarried quadroon 
mothers was to have their children pass for whites, 
and so get access to the privileged class. To reach 
this end, there was nothing they would not attempt, 
no sacrifice they would not make. To protect society 
against one of their means, a law was passed making it 
a penal offence for a public officer in the discharge of 
his functions, Avhen Avriting down the name of any 
coloured free person, to fail to add the qualification 
"homme" or ''femme de couleur libre." But the offi- 
cers of the law could be bribed, even the records of 
baptism tampered with ; and the qualification once 
dropped, acted inversely, as a patent of pure blood. 

It was in 1842, in the very heyday of the brilliant, 
unwholesome notoriety of the quadroon women, that 
the congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family 
was founded. Three young women of colour, descend- 
ants of three of the oldest and most respectable free 
coloured families in the city, came together resolved to 



JSfEW OBLEANS. 



349 



devote their lives, education, and wealth to the cause of 
religion and charity among" their own j)eople ; to suc- 
cour the helpless and old, to befriend friendless young 
coloured girls, to teach the catechism to the young, and 
prepare young and old for the sacrament of commun- 
ion. They were afterwards joined by another young 
woman, like themselves of good family, education, and 
means. Their vocation, under the circumstances, 
seems sublime ; their name a divine inspiration. 







Hj^H^vT*"'^/ 



Mother Juliette was the oldest of the four young 
women. Of their history and personality, beyond their 
having j)ossessed, in a marked degree, the beauty of 
their class, little is known. They concealed their past, 
with their features, under the veil of their order But 
it would seem that, in their case, the imagination is a 
safe means of approach to the story of their lives. And 
the imagination prompted, it may be, by the impulsive 
sentiment of sympathy ; picturing them making proof 



350 NEW ORLEANS. 

of their faith in their environment of race, time, and 
circumstance, sees them in the similitude of those bar- 
barian virgins of primeval Christianity who made proof 
of their faith in the blood-stained arena of the amphi- 
theatre ; wild beasts springing around them, a pam- 
pered, luxurious world looking on. — In their renun- 
ciation, they at least, of their race, found the road to 
social equality. No white woman could do more ; 
none have done better. 

Like all beginners in a new field, they had many 
obstacles, trials, and tribulations to overcome ; but 
their perseverance never faltered, and they could 
always count upon the support and sympathy of the 
Archbishop and his Vicar-General. Their first estab- 
lishment was an obscure one on Ba^^ou road. A few 
years later, they took charge of a home for old and 
inlirm women ; later, they built their house on Bayou 
road, between Rampart and St. Claude streets. 

As may be foreseen, it Avas after the civil war that 
tlie sisters received the impetus of a new life, and felt 
the true prophetic bidding of the vocation that first sent 
them into service. Such a wave of want and misery 
from their own race rolled in upon them, that they 
battled merely to keep head above it. But neverthe- 
less they managed to establish a school, open two branch 
houses in the country, and take charge of an orphan 
asylum. In 1881 they felt the ground under their 
feet once more, and looking up saw the promise of a 
new era dawning upon them. The old Orleans street 
Ijall-room was in the market for sale. They bought 
it. When they are asked " What were your means ? " 
tliey answer simply: "Prayer and begging." When 
it is asked in the community, " Which are the sisters 



NEW ORLEANS. 351 

to wliom one listens and gives Avitli tlie most pleas 
ure?" the answer is unhesitating, '^The little coloured 
sisters." 

The community consists of forty-nine sisters, a supe- 
rior, and an assistant. They follow the rule of 8t. 
Augustine, the novitiate lasting two years and six 
months ; vows are renewed every year until after ten 
years' profession, when they become perpetual. They 
receive orphans, not only from Louisiana, but from 
every state in the Union ; from South America, Cen- 
tral America, and Mexico. Their pay scholars come 
from every community, it would seem, in the New 
World to which Africans were brought as slaves, and 
they represent every possible admixture of French, 
Spanish, English, Indian, and African blood. There 
are few pure Africans among them. 

Adjoining the Orleans ball-room, as we know, stood 
that social cynosure, the Orleans theatre. Long since 
Ijurned down, its site was tilled by the most l)latant of 
circuses about the time that the l)all-room became con- 
verted into a convent. The ring of the circus was sep- 
arated only by the necessary widtli of the wall from the 
])all-room — that is, from the chapel of the convent, and 
from the very altar which filled the end of the ball- 
room ; and the ribald noises of the ring made most 
demoniacal irruptions into the chapel, disturbing the 
devotions of the sisters, profaning their most sacred 
ceremonies. Lideed, as related by the sisters, it seemed 
at times, such was the din that poured in from behind 
the altar and over the head of the pale virgin, as if the 
old mocking spirits of the room, infuriated into a ten- 
thousandfold fury of maliciousness, were determined to 
regain possession of it. The discouraging thought 



352 NE]V ORLEANS. 

more than once came to the sisters — it was of course 
the malicious suggestion of the evil spirits — that 
neither prayer nor exorcism avouIcI ever prevail against 
the genius loci, that the ball-room could never become 
a chapel, but must remain according to its original 
character, a ball-room, aye and forever. And so twelve- 
month succeeded twelvemonth, and circus and con- 
vent, in their inevitable antagonism, waged their war, 
each after its kind ; the convent, silent, resigned, firm ; 
the circus, bold, brazen, and triumphant, as no doubt 
circuses cannot help being. But the circus, foredoomed 
(as circuses also inevitably seem to be), went the way 
of the theatre : it was consumed one night. 

The convent, by the usual miracle of convents, 
escaped. And it did more than escape ; for, before the 
dawning of daylight, a scheme to buy the ground under 
the smouldering ruins of her antagonist began to 
formulate itself in the brain of the mother superior. 
The scheme was imparted to the community after ser- 
vice ; by noon tlie prayers and the begging to accom- 
plish it were at work. The orphan asylum to-day fills 
the site of the circus; and, covering the ring of the 
cirrus — not to say that the measurement is exact, over 
the once noisy, brilliant little hippodrome (it was never 
more wicked than that), extinguishing forever even the 
memory of its departed glories of spangles, stockinette, 
clown, trapeze, trick horse, and learned dog — rises a 
chapel, the new public chapel of convent and asylum. 

This chapel, it must be emphasized as a necessary 
finish to the relation, was built from a legacy left the 
sisters, just at the moment they needed it for the pur- 
pose, by one of their own colour and class, Thorny 
Lafon, a })lnlanthropist who (this must also be added 



NEW ORLEANS. 



353 



to the relation and to his memory), seeing no colour 
nor sect in his love for his city, distributed his life's 
earnings, by will, indiscriminately among white and 
black, Protestant and Catholic. Tlie state legislature 
has ordered his bust to be carved and set up in one of 
the public institutions in the city. Like the statue to 
Margaret, it will be the first memorial of its kind in 
the country. It will be the first public testimonial by 
a state to a man of colour, in recognition of his broad 
humanitarianism and true-hearted philanthropy. 

" This," said the sister, stopping at the chapel door, 
" is the old Orleans ball-room ; they say it is the best 
dancing floor in the world. It is made of three thick- 
nesses of cypress. That is the balcony where the ladies 
and gentlemen used to promenade ; on the banquette 
down there the beaux used to fio-ht duels." 





-fri«flj.T^v, 



CHAPTER XV. 

n^HE present brings us to ourselves, which is quite 
-*- a different point of view from our ancestors and 
the past. To look into to-day is to look into a mirror ; 
and a mirror, except to the dim-visioned, affords 
mostly only ocular verification of secret apprehensions. 
Thank Heaven, it is only we who, looking out of our 
own eyes into the mirror, and seeing the thousand 
proofs that we are not what we would be, can know 
the reason for it ; others guess and infer ; we know. 
But reasons, after all, are only a satisfaction in tlie 
abstract life of science. Nothing is more discouraging 
in real life than reasons ; — the great inevitable in 
broken causes. Sometimes it almost seems that it is 
the irrational alone that can hope for tranquility here 
below, for their logical deficiency cuts them off, not 
only from the inherited responsibilities of the past, but 
emancipates them from those of the future. 

However, if there be secular consolation for our per- 
sonal mortality as citizens, in the sentiment of the con- 
tinuity of the life of the city itself, there is the same 
consolation for our limited morality in the sentiment 
of the moral continuity of the city, as a recent French 
writer expresses it, in " the sentiment of the city itself ; 

354 



NEW ORLEANS. 355 

of tlie incessant need we have of her, and the immense 
part she has had, and will never cease to have, in the 
formation of our spiritual as well as material security 
and well-being ; of what laborious efforts it has cost 
anterior generations to constitute her what she is . . . 
of the gratitude and consideration she deserves, not- 
withstanding her imperfections." . . . 

With this sentiment in one's mind in regard to one's 
city, the most inadequate expression of her present 
condition seems to be that furnished by official figures, 
fertilized tliough they be into ever sturdier growth, 
annually, by statistical reports ; the blessedness of 
knowing that a mother is increasing in health and 
wealth would be poorly conveyed by quotations from 
her physician's report or her bank account. 

Sitting on the balcony, in the starlight of a mid- 
July night, thinking over the incompleteness of the task 
accomplished — and the brave effort of the task be- 
gun — when everything that should have been put 
in seems left out, and so much put in that might have 
been left out, as a journey which delighted in its actual- 
ity appears in retrospect only a vast series of regrets 
for what one did not see. On such an evening, look- 
ing up at the dim heavens above, there seem very few 
stars for very much sky, and it occurs then, that in the 
America of to-day, and city for city, figures are, after 
all, better media than letters. 

Ah! Rockets suddenly break and spangle the dim 
heavens above with miniature constellations, comets, 
and meteors and there are at times more stars now 
in the sky than space to hold them ; — showering in 
their splendid whirl through the jNlilky Way, across 
Scorpio, the Dipper, the Cross, Corona. — We remem- 



356 NEW ORLEANS. 

ber that it is one day short of mid-July, that it is 
the fourteenth of July, "le quatorze, de France," that 
the thoroughfares are arched with the colours of the 
French Republic, that the Tricolor flutters from the car- 
heads, that the "Marseillaise " is the national hymn of 
the hour, and that patriotism is again speaking French, 
to commemorate the fete of the old own mother 
country of Louisiana. It is a timely interruption to 
recriminating tlioughts, and they flash after the fire- 
works, from suggestion to suggestion and person to 
person, until they, too, spangle the dark interstices of 
retrospection and collect their fantastic groupings of 
constellations. 

Moreau Gottschalk's " Danse Negre " falls upon the 
ear. Moreau Gottschalk! how completely he had been 
forgotten in the account of that brilliant American 
period of the city! That any one could ever have for- 
gotten him! He who carried the music of New Orleans 
into the great European lists, and won name and fame 
for himself and his city there. Yes; at that day it was 
called fame. It is a Creole pianist who is phxying 
the " Danse Negre " now. All the Creole pianists play 
Gottschalk's pieces, one can hear them at any time in 
the Creole portion of the city. And may they never 
cease to be played in the city of his birth and inspira- 
tion, for no music, imported by money from abroad, 
can ever speak to the native heart as it does. It is 
the atavism of the soil in sound. What can be written 
about his place and his people, that is not to be felt in 
his Danses, Berceuses and Meditations ? and in him, in 
Gottschalk, too ; one of the best of Creole blossomings, 
the purest French, Spanish, and good old Holland 
blood, ripened by all the influences of the place, into the 




"Beujaniiii Frauklin. 



NEW ORLEANS. 359 

efflorescence of music. And what a ripening influence 
he has been for others ! How many little Creole boys and 
girls since his triumph have been spurred to the daily 
routine practice at the piano by stories of how little 
Moreau Gottschalk at seven years accomplished his 
six hours a day. And ah! what meteoric visions of 
a Moreau Gottschalk future have cheered the five-finger 
exercises and the long sittings on the hard, round, 
haircloth stool, so inexorably out of reach of the pedals. 
And later, when another age had succeeded to the live- 
finger exercise age, when all the glamourous details of 
the artist's life (until then so carefully concealed, Avhich 
made them all the more seductive) became known, with 
his tragic death in South America, the fervid hearts 
of the young pianists beat for all that too, as for the 
only life and death for an artist. 

Another meteor flamed into view shortly afterwards 
— Paul Morphy. It really appeared at that time as 
if the Crescent City were going to provide the United 
States with celebrities. She thinks still, in her pride, 
that she would have done so had not her most 
promising youth been drafted, since the Civil War, 
into the menial service of working for a living. It was 
not very long ago that, at opera, theatre, concert, ball, 
or promenade, or at celebrations at the cathedral, the 
figure of Paul Morphy was instinctively looked for. 
Dark-skinned, with brilliant black eyes, black hair ; 
slight and graceful, with the hands and smile of a 
woman, his personality held the eye with a charm that 
appeared to the imagination akin to mystery. He 
belonged also to what is called the good old families, 
and dated from what is called the good old times, and 
lived in one of the old brick mansions on Royal street, 



360 NE]V OBLEANS. 

whose pretty court-yard ever attracts tlie inquiries of 
the passiiig-by stranger. And as young musicians of the 
day strummed after the star of Gottschalk, so young 
chess-players played with Morphy's glittering triumphs 
and the chess championship of the world before them. 
They are old chess-players now, meeting in a great 
club of their own, entertaining distinguished visitors, 
and holding their local aiid international matches: 
but that which most prominently characterizes these old 
gentlemen to the foreign and to the home chess world 
of to-day is not, as they imagine, their personal prowess 
at the game, undisputed as that is, but the perpetu- 
ating in their club of the ^Nlorphy tradition and senti- 
ment ; the Creole tradition and sentiment, it may be 
called, which give picturesqueness, not only to the 
individuals but to so many of the institutions of New 
Orleans, localizing them, narrowing them, perhaps, but 
infinitely poetizing, and, we may say, enhancing them. 
Out of that period, however, there is no man who 
strikes the taste of the present with so fine a flavour of 
the old-time dramatic vicissitudes as he whom the chil- 
dren of the public schools are being taught to-day to 
love as their greatest benefactor, to whose bust they 
bring flowers, and for whom commemorative exercises 
arie held once a year, — John McDonogh. The life that 
he acted out here might have been composed by a 
great novelist, it seems so well adjusted to its round of 
circumstance. It was lived, however, and not merely 
written ; otherwise the criticism would be that it was 
too realistic, and that it was weakened b}^ that absurd 
adjunct, a moral ; and the story begins in the common- 
place way that no modern self-respecting novelist 
would deign to employ. 



NEW ORLEANS. 361 

McDonogh was born in Baltimore, of worthy and 
and good Scotch parentage, and came to New Orleans 
in 1800, in his twenty-second year, on a commercial 
venture. Tall, fine looking, liberally educated, refined, 
polished in manner, with the best social credentials, 
he had all the qualifications necessary at that time in 
the community to make an American persona grata in 
society — in society, Avhich, in reality, was the com- 
munity. He was, as is always carefully explained 
(a very antique explanation it is nowadays), a gentle- 
man first, a keen, shrewd, commercial genius second- 
arily. In ten years he had made his fortune, a fortune, 
as it was understood then, counted by the hundreds of 
thousands, not by the millions ; and he enjoyed it as 
gentlemen were then expected to enjoy fortunes, in a 
handsome establishment (on Chartres and Toulouse 
streets), with a rich gentleman's retinue of slaves, 
carriages, horses ; giving balls, receptions, dinner- 
parties, entertaining ; leading the life, in short, of a 
wealthy young gentleman of good birth, breeding, 
and manners, who was fond of society. He was, in the 
authoritative judgment of prudent mammas, the parti 
par excellence in the city. Micsela Almonaster was then 
in all the belle-hood of her fortune and sixteen years, 
and society — or the Almonaster faction in society — 
would have it that he had asked the hand of Mictela, as 
all the young beaux were then doing, but was refused 
because he was a heretic, and not of birth noble 
enough for a union with the daughter of the Alferez 
Real. But this is only a report, to be buzzed between 
women in balcony gossips. 

During the invasion, and at the battle of New Or- 
leans, McDonogh distinguished himself by his gallantry 



362 NEW OBLEANS. 

and liberality, as all young men in society were in 
honour bound to do, liis name and his person figuring 
conspicuously in all functions. Then — this is the fact, 
although balcony talkers run over it in that perfunctory, 
uninterested way they have of treating facts — there 
came to New Orleans a Baltimore merchant of wealth 
and distinction. As has been noted, wealth at that 
day was not essentially the distinction of merchants. 
He brought his wife and young daughter with him. It 
is one of the prettiest of pleasures to a listener to hear 
old beaux talk about this young Baltimore girl. She 
was extremely beautiful and an heiress, but — this is 
never insisted upon — slie did not impress by means of 
it at all, but entirely by her grace, her modesty, her 
dignity, seriousness, ineffable charm, and the old- 
fashioned virtues of truth, candour, and high prin- 
ciples. The old beaux say with conviction, and their 
assurance begets conviction, even in a woman now, that 
for all in all, they have never in a long life since seen 
a woman to compare with her. The parti of New 
Orleans loved her, without hesitation, at first sight — 
but they say all men did tliat — and she, Avhen she knew 
him, loved him. He made the formal demande en 
mariage. The father, a fervent Roman Catholic, ex- 
acted a change of religion. This was categorically 
refused by the Scotch Presbyterian lover. The young 
girl made no terms about religion : she could not, 
knowing his love and her love. So they agreed to wait, 
and trust to time and persuasion to change the father's 
determination. 

They waited and hoped in vain. Another formal 
demand was made for the daughter ; it was again re- 
jected. The young girl then announced that, as she 



NEW ORLEANS. 363 

could not marry the man she loved, she would become 
a nun. She took the veil in the Ursuline chapel. He 
as effectually, in his own way, took the robe and ton- 
sure. He broke up his establishment in the city, aban- 
doned his elegant social life, and retired to a solitary 
and isolated existence on his plantation across tlie river, 
at the little town whose lawlessness had even then 
earned for it the title of "Algiers." Every morning, 
except Sunday, he would cross the river in his own 
skiff, rowed by his slaves, land, walk to his place of 
business, remain there until afternoon, return on foot 
to the levee, cross the river again to his sequestered 
home. This was all that his former friends ever saw 
of his life. 

As the young girl had renounced all but religious 
communication with the world, he appeared to have 
renounced all but business communication with it ; 
and, as she laboured in her faith for one expression of 
a purpose, he laboured in his faith for another expres- 
sion of it. Money-making was still in a primitive 
state of development. It was really money-making; 
laying up, piece by piece, filing bill after bill ; it was 
buying and selling a commodity itself, not the wager- 
able values of it ; it was bargaining upon the earth, 
not speculating in the air. The gay, easy society of 
the place, reckoning as gentlemen and for gentlemen, 
owned but two capital sins, — cowardice and avarice ; 
it was pitiless to both. The rumour started that the 
whilom leader of society was making money, not for 
tlie enjoyment it could buy for him and his fellow- 
creatures, but for its own sordid sake ; that he was 
hoarding it ; women began to grow cold to him ; men 
to avoid him, except for business purposes. Thirty 



364 NEW ORLEANS. 

years afterwards, a long period of time reckoned 
liiimanly, a bent, grey, meanly clad figure, with stern, 
compressed face, was pointed at on the street as 
McDonogh the Miser. 

So it came to be; McDonogh, nothing else that any 
one cared to remember, but McDonogh the Miser. In 
fact, everything else about him had been forgotten. 
As, during one period of his life every circumstance 
fawned to him, and suggested to his courtiers more and 
more titles of respectful, even loving, admiration, now 
every circumstance produced some discredit to turn 
upon him ; and, from the highest to the lowest in the 
city, no one seemed ever to know him, except to hate 
his insufferal)le meanness ; and all seemed conscience- 
free to spy upon him and report about him. The 
market-people would relate the miserable pittance he 
expended every two or three days upon soup-meat and 
potatoes ; the ferryman how, for thirty years, summer 
and winter, in rain or shine, he had crossed the river in an 
open skiff, rather than pay five cents to the ferry, ex- 
cept once during a furious storm. The newspaper boys 
repeated that he was never known to buy a newspaper ; 
the hackmen, that but once in the long thirty years he 
took the omnibus; — the day before his death, when he 
was seized with a faintness in the street. He sued a 
widow and an orphan on a note, and was vilipended in 
open court for it. He could never have been otherwise 
than of imposing appearance; his face, from mere feature 
effect, must ever have been fine . . . yet it was used as 
an abhorrent symbol of avarice and nothing but avarice. 
He had no blood in his veins, it was said, and as much 
heart as a ten-dollar gold piece. Most pathetic of all 
was the way the children knew him, despised him, and 




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NEW ORLEANS. 367 

shrank from him, and repeated all the parental accusa- 
tions against him. Had he been a proven villain, he 
could not have been treated, in the hearts of people, 
more cruelly. Nay, there were even then, as there 
always will be in society, rich villains who were treated 
well by all ; but they were not stingy. Common people 
said he was even too mean to be immoral. 

It was a generous, free-handed time, as we must 
remember, every one making money and spending it. 
There was even some emulation among the rich to link 
their names to the city by some deed of gift, and so 
gain at least a momentary disjiensation from the oblivion 
of death. jNIcDonogh Iniying and selling and shaving 
paper, accumulating his land and property, reducing 
even his business relations with men to the barest ne- 
cessities, revealed, during the long thirty years of his 
after life, but one touch of humanity. When the Ursu- 
line sister, after her thirty years of work, became supe- 
rior of the convent, he availed himself of the privilege 
she possessed, of receiving visitors, and called upon 
her every New Year, and it was noted that he dressed 
carefully and appeared not at all the old man he was, 
but the old man that his youth promised to become. 

Death took him at last one day in 1850, and j^eople 
laughed to think how much it was like Death taking 
himself. He was buried the next day, Sunday after- 
noon, in the tomb he had prepared on his plantation. 
His will was probated. And then, to the eyes of the 
city, it was as if the heavy dull clouds of a winter's day 
had suddenly cracked, showing through innumerable 
fissures glimpses of brightness above and beyond ; the 
brightness which had always been on the other side. 

Little real money was left ; the hoardings had been of 



368 NEW ORLEANS. 

land and city property. " I have preferred," he wrote 
in his will, " as a revenue, the earth, as part of the solid 
globe. One thing is certain, it will not take wings and 
fly away as gold and silver and governmental bonds and 
stocks often do. It is the only thing in this world that 
approaches anything like permanency." He bequeathed 
it all to the two cities, Baltimore and New Orleans, for 
educational purposes, asking "as a small favour, that 
the little children shall sometimes come and plant a few 
flowers above my grave." It is a pathetic document, 
this long, ramliling will, and in reading it one quivers 
involuntarily at the harsh, rude speeches that dogged 
the man's old age, and one shrinks away from the pre- 
sentment by imagination of the long, lonely evenings 
that filled the thirty-five years of the solitary planta- 
tion home, — and one wishes — ah ! how one wishes ! — 
that the little children had not mocked and pointed at 
him, and that at least one in his life had proffered him 
the flowers he craved for his grave. "I feel bound to 
explain," he wrote; "having seen and felt that my con- 
duct, views, and object in life were not understood by 
my fellow-men. I have much, very much to complain 
of the world, rich as well as poor; it has harassed me in 
a thousand different ways. . . . They said of me : ' He 
is rich, he is old, without wife or child, let us take from 
him what he has!' Infatuated men! They knew not 
that that was an attempt to take from themselves, for 
I have been labouring all my life, not for myself, but 
for them and their children." 

The last clause reads: "The love of singing, given me 
in my youth, has been the delight and charm of my life 
tliroughout all its subsequent periods and trials. Still 
has its love and charm pervaded my existence and gilded 



NJEW ohleans. 



369 



my path to comparative liappiness below, and I firmly 
believe led me to what little virtue I have practised." 

A woman's faded, gold-emliroid- 
ered slipper was found hidden 
away among his papers. 

Descendants of his slaves tell 
how kind he was to them, and how 
comfortably he housed them. He 
built a church for them, in which 
he often read the Bible and 
preached to them. He introduced 
among them a scheme of gradual 
emancipation, by which each one 
could purchase freedom in the 
course of fifteen years, on condi- 
tion of returning to Africa Avhen 
freed. It worked so well 
that chastisement became 
unknoNvn on the plantation, 
and eighty self-freed men 
and women left Algiers for 
Liberia in 1841. '•'•They 
had sometliing to look for- 
ward to," he explained in 
his Avill, "a spark glowed 
in their bosoms. Take 
hope from a man's heart, 
and life is not worth liv- 
ing." His theory was that white and black men could 
not live harmoniously, side by side, in freedom, and in 
his last counsel to his negroes, he urged them, " as their 
friend, should freedom ever come to them, that they 
separate themselves from the white man; that they 







370 NEW on LEANS. 

take their wives, their chihlren, and their substance, 
and depart to the great and ancient hind of their 
fathers." According to the provisions of his will, a 
second cargo of freed slaves sailed for Africa in 1858. 

In 1855, after a tedious and costly litigation, the two 
cities took possession of their inheritance. Despite the 
usual mismanagement of a money trust by a city's 
official guardians and the depreciation in value of the 
property and other losses, in consequence of the Civil 
War, over half a million of dollars remained to carry 
out the purpose of ]McDonogh. They have bought or 
built over twenty handsome public schoolhouses, and 
under the present most worthy administration of the 
fund, a goodly fortune still rests to the credit of the 
school-children of the state. In each schoolhouse has 
been placed a bust of John McDonogh, and, as has been 
said, the little children are now being taught, among 
other lessons, to reverence and love him. . . . But a 
Ijad name dies hard, and love is a difficult thing to 
learn theoretically. 

At the same time with John McDonogh, and side 
by side with him, lived his contrast, one whose name 
is a synonym for all that is charitable, loving, and 
broad-minded, the Israelite, Judah Touro. He also 
came to the city in the first year of the century, and 
made his venture in commerce. He was at Chalmette, 
and, physically incapacitated from fighting, he volun- 
teered to carry shot and shell to the batteries, and fell 
wounded, it was thought mortally. For thirty years he 
devoted himself exclusively to business, and was never 
seen on the streets except on his way to and from his 
office ; and he, too, from an early disappointment in 
love, never married. But it is estimated tliat during 



NEW ORLEANS. 371 

his lifetime lie gave away over four hundred thousand 
dollars in charity. For his own people he built a 
synagogue, an almshouse, an intirmary, purchased a 
cemetery, and contributed forty thousand dollars to the 
Jewish cemetery at Newport. He built a Christian 
church for a minister whom he greatly admired, and 
contributed to every Christian charity in the city. He 
subscribed twenty thousand dollars to the Bunker Hill 
monument. Of his private benefactions, particularly 
during the epidemics, the only record is, that he not 
only never refused and never stinted, but that he was 
ahvays the first and most generous giver. He Avas nig- 
gardly only to himself, gratifying only the strictly 
necessary personal wants. His clerk- once bought him 
a coat, and on the same day a friend bought a similar 
one two dollars cheaper ; he made the clerk return his 
purchase ; but a few hours later he gave five thousand 
dollars to the sufferers from the Mobile fire, before 
any demand had been made upon him. 

He died in 1854. His will distributed one-half of 
his fortune in charity ; every Hebrew congregation in 
the country was remembered, and a legacy was left to 
the project of restoring the scattered tribes of Israel 
to Jerusalem. 

There is another figure, another story, perhaps the 
most original of all, that comes to us out -of this little 
past just behind us, to which our little present played 
the role of vague, distant future. By the rush light of 
our reality, how clear and distinct appear to us its 
ideals, problems, mysteries, its enigmatical destinies! 
What a game of blindman's-buff our grandparents seem 
to be playing ! What stumblings ! VVliat gropings ! 
What irrationality ! We wonder as naively at their 



372 ^ NEW ORLEANS. 

unconsciousness of their foolishness as Iberville did at 
the young Indian girls who, he wrote in his journal, 
went naked without knowing it. And a propos of this, 
fancy has often suggested : suppose some Cagliostro 
had entered one of the vaunted, dazzling assemblages 
of the society of the time, and, looking upon all the 
beautiful and charming and distinguished women about 
him, had predicted to them that one woman living then 
in their city would be the first woman in the United 
States honoured by a monument ; what a thrill of ex- 
citement would have passed through the beautiful 
faces, what a glance of expectation leap into the lovely 
eyes! For, in their youth and beauty, flattered by the 
adulation around them into the momentary immortality 
of belle-hood, women (intrinsically simple as the sex is 
about itself) might easily be startled at a ball into pre- 
tensions to the permanent immortality of a monument. 
Suppose that under challenge and badinage, Cagliostro 
had volunteered to lead them to the woman in question, 
witli what a titter of expectation and excitement the 
gay rout, bursting like a Mardi Gras procession into 
the dark street and night outside, would have followed 
him. Through all the best streets, by all the best 
houses, away from all the good families, churches, 
charitable institutions, farther and farther from every 
possible precijict or neighbourhood of their own, to the 
terra incognita of back streets, alley-ways and servants' 
passages, winding up at last, oh, climax of the absurd! 
in the laundry of the St. Charles hotel, where a short, 
stout, good-faced young Irishwoman was finishing her 
day's task. 

There is not much to tell. jNIargaret Haughery's 
story is simple enough to be called stupid, with im- 



NEW OB LEANS. 



373 



piinity. A husband and wife, fresh Irish immigrants, 
died in Baltimore of yeUow fever, leaving their infant, 
named Margaret, upon the charity of the community. 
A sturdy young Welsh couple, who had crossed the 
ocean with the Irish immigrants, took the little orphan 
and cared for her as if she were their own child. Tliey 
were Baptists, hut 
they reared her in the 
faith of her parents, 
and ke})t her with 
tliem until she mar- 
ried a 3^oung Irish- 
man in her oavu rank 
in life. Failing health 
forced the liusband to 
remove to the warmer 
climate of New Or- 
leans, and finally, for 
the sake of the sea 
voyage, to sail to Ire- 
land, where he died. 
Shortly afterwards, 
Margaret, in New Or- . 




oJevvnt'Ql'^^' 



leans, lost her baby 

To make a living, she 

engaged as laundress 

in the St. Charles hotel. This was her equipment at 

twenty for her monument. 

The sisters of a neighl)ouring asylum Avere at the 
time in great straits to provide for the orphans in their 
charge, and they were struggling desperately to build 
a larger house, which was becoming daily more neces- 
sary to them. The childless widow, Margaret, went to 



374 NEW ORLEANS. 

the superior and offered her humble services and a 
share of her earnings. Tliey were most gratefully 
accepted. From her savings at the laundry, jNIargaret 
bought two cows, and opened a dairy, delivering the 
milk herself. Every morning, year after year, in rain 
or shine, she drove her cart the rounds of her trade. 
Returning, she would gather up the cold victuals which 
she begged from the hotels, and these she would distrib- 
ute among the asylums in need. And many a time it was 
only this food that kept hunger from the orphans. It 
was during those deadly periods of the great epidemics, 
when children were orphaned by the thousands. The 
new, larger asylum was commenced, and in ten years 
Margaret's dairy, pouring its profits steadily into the 
exchequer, was completed and paid for. The dairy was 
enlarged, and more money was made, out of which an 
infant asylum — her baby-house, as Margaret called it 
— was built, and then the St. Elizabeth training-asylum 
for grown girls. With all this, Margaret still could 
save money to invest. One of her debtors, a baker, 
failing, she was forced to accept his establishment for 
his debt. She therefore dropped her dairy and took to 
baking, substitutincr the bread for the milk cart. She 
drove one as well as the other, and made her deliveries 
with the regularity that had become as characteristic 
of her as her sunbonnet was. She furnished the orphan 
asylums at so low a price and gave away so much bread 
in charity that it is surprising that she made any money 
at all ; but every year brought an increase of business, 
and an enlargement of her original establishment, which 
grew in time into a factory worked by steam. It was 
situated in the business centre of the city, and jMargaret, 
always sitting in the open doorway of her office, and 



1 



NEW ORLEANS. 375 

always good-liumonred and talkative, l^ecame an integral 
part of the business world about her. No one could pass 
without a word with her, and, as it was said no enter- 
prise that she endorsed ever failed, she was consulted 
as an infallible oracle by all ; ragamuffins, paper boys, 
porters, clerks, even by her neighbours, the great mer- 
chants and bankers, all calling her " Margaret " and 
nothing more. She never dressed otherwise than as 
her statue represents her, in a calico dress, with small 
shawl, and never wore any other head covering than a 
sunbonnet, and slie was never known to sit any other 
way than as she sits in marble. She never learned to 
read or write, and never could distinguish one figure 
from another. She signed with a mark the will that 
distributed lier thousands of dollars among the orphan 
asylums of the city. She did not forget one of them, 
white or coloured ; Protestants and Jews were remem- 
bered as well as Catholics, for she never forgot that 
it was a Protestant couple that cared for her when 
she was an orphan. " They are all orphans alike," 
was her oft-repeated comment. The anecdotes about 
her would fill a volume. She never parted from any one 
without leaving an anecdote behind her, so to speak. 

During the four years of the war she had a hard task 
to maintain her business ; but she never on that account 
diminished her contributions to the orphans, and to the 
needy, and to the families of Confederate soldiers. 

When she died, it seemed as if people could not be- 
lieve it. "• Margaret dead ! " Why, each one had just 
seen her, talked to her, consulted her, asked her for 
something, received something from her. The news of 
the death of any one else in the city would have been 
received with more credulity. But the journals all 



376 



NEJV ORLEANS. 



appeared in mourning, and the obituaries were there, 
and these obituaries, could she have read them, woukl 
have struck Margaret as the most incredible thing in 
the world to have happened to her. The statue was a 
spontaneous thought, and it found spontaneous action. 
While her people were still talking about her death, 




^^ t'lj.'/./Vy, ,,7, ^"- '/' ^^.^^ 

the fund for it was collected ; it was ordered and exe- 
cuted ; and almost before she was missed there, she 
was there again before the asjdum she had built, sitting 
on her same old chair that every one knew so well, 
dressed in the familiar calico gown with her little shaAvl 
over her shoulders, not the old shawl she wore every 
day, but the pretty one of which she was so proud, 
which the orphans crocheted for her. 



NEW Oli LEANS. 377 

All the dignitaries of the State and. city were at the 
unveiling of the statue. A thousand orphans, represent- 
ing every asylum in the city, occupied the seats of 
honour; a delegation of them pulled the cords that held 
the canvas covering over the marble, and, as it fell, and 
" Margaret " appeared, their delight led the loud shout 
of joy, and the hand-clapping. The streets were crowded 
as far as the eye could see, and it was said — with, no 
doul)t, an exaggeration of sentiment, but a pardonable 
one — that not a man, woman, or child in the crowd 
but knew Margaret and loved her. And there is an 
explanation of this exaggeration that might be excusa- 
bly mentioned, that as the unveiling of the monument 
took place in the summer, when the rich go away for 
cliange of air, the crowd was composed of the poorer 
classes, the working people, black as well as white. As 
the dedication speech expressed it for them for all 
time : '^ To those who look with concern upon the 
moral situation of the hour, and fear that human action 
finds its sole motive to-day in selfishness and greed, who 
imagine that the world no longer yields homage save to 
fortune and to power . . . the scene . . . affords com- 
fort and cheer. When we see the people of this great 
city meet without distinction of age, rank, or creed, 
with one heart, to pay their tribute of love and respect 
to the humble woman who passed her quiet life among 
us under the simple name of ' Margaret,' we come fully 
to know, to feel, and to appreciate, the matchless power 
of a well-spent life. . . . The substance of her life 
was charity, the spirit of it, truth, the strength of it, 
religion, the end, peace — then fame and immortality." 

Out of same period came, also, Paul Tulane, who 
endowed the city with a university. 



378 NEW ORLEANS. 

" Gesta dei per francos," as the device went of the 
preux chevaliers of France among' the Crusaders : we 
must credit this great benefactor to the mother country 
and mother blood of Louisiana. The family of Tulane 
figures in the earliest records of Tours, in which, for 
one hundred and fifty years, various members of it 
held an eminent judicial office. The immediate family 
of Paul Tulane were Huguenots; his father emigrated 
to St. Domingo, where, as a merchant with business 
connections in the United States and France, he accu- 
mulated great wealth. He lost it all there in the 
revolution. Barely escaping, with his family, the mas- 
sacre in which most of his relatives and friends perished, 
he sought refuge in the United States, and established 
himself near Princeton, New Jersey. The straitened 
circumstances of his father could grant but a meagre 
education to young Paul Tulane. At sixteen he was 
working on the family's farm, and assisting in a small 
grocery at Princeton. His cousin, the son of the 
probate judge at Tours, travelling in the United States 
through the South and West, took him as companion. 
The journey lasted three years and was filled with all 
the adventures and experiences with which travelling 
in that day was replete. Two incidents of the journey 
were ever afterwards outstanding in Tulane's memory: 
a visit to General Jackson at the Hermitage and meet- 
ing on a steamboat in Kentucky some French-speaking 
gentlemen, Creoles from New Orleans, who were taking 
their sons to college. This struck him, coming from 
Princeton, as most strange. " Is it true," he asked, 
" that there is no college in New Orleans where the 
young men can be educated?" These words and his 
surprise recurred to him again and again in after life. 



NEW OBLEANS. 379 

Attracted, doubtless, by the nationality of the place, 
he came, in 1822, to New Orleans. An epidemic of yel- 
low fever was raging at the time, but he needed to 
work, and found it easier to secure a good situation tlien 
when there were so many vacant from death and aban- 
donment than at a pleasanter season. Industrious, pru- 
dent, frugal, and unquestionably honourable in every 
transaction, he soon rose from a subordinate position 
and engaged in business for himself, making, in course 
of time, not only a living, but a fortune, alongside of 
the older McDonogh, Touro, and the many other great 
fortune makers of the day. Paying a visit, fifteen 
years later, to France with his father, the latter took 
occasion, as they were passing through Nantes and 
Bordeaux, to call his attention to the depressed com- 
mercial situation of the once prosperous cities, the 
deserted harbours, empty, rotting warehouses ; brought 
about by the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. 
He predicted a like fate for New Orleans, and re- 
minding his son of the ruin of his own fortune in St. 
Domingo, warned him against investing his money in 
the South. The young merchant, therefore, placed the 
bulk of his profits in New Jersey, although for a quarter 
of a century afterwards he realized princely rentals 
from his investments in New Orleans. 

There are no dramas, no romances, tragedies, nor 
passions told of Tulane, although he never married. 
His life was that of a merchant intent on business ; 
of a man of dignity, distinction, refinement, and means. 
The ncAvspapers did not publish such things then, 
therefore there is only private testimony to establish it, 
but it was always said of him, from the beginning of 
his career in New Orleans, that in proportion to his 



380 NEW on LEANS. 

means, he gave away more in charity than any other 
man in the United States. The only anecdotes ex- 
tant about him rehite to his love for New Orleans 
and for its people. He was fond of boasting that 
he had eaten fifty-one Fourth of July dinners in the 
place. 

The day predicted by his father came to pass ; the 
question of slavery brought revolution and ruin into the 
city. A strong sympathizer with the South, Tulane 
gave liberally to the families of Confederate soldiers 
in the city, and was the ever ready helper of Confeder- 
ate prisoners. His personal losses by the war were 
great, but they were naught in comparison with those 
who, losing only thousands, lost their all ; with families 
turned upon the world as destitute as his own had been 
by the revolution of St. Domingo. Commonplace as 
such things are in print, they strike with an awful 
originality into one's own experience, and the old 
merchant felt keenly the change in the fortunes about 
him. After his fifty-first Fourth of July dinner, he 
returned to his family in New Jersey to end his days, 
being then past his tliree-score years and ten. 

This was in 1873, the darkest period of the city's 
social and political disorganization. Tulane could not, 
perhaps, in the whole prosperous triumx)hant North, 
have found a more striking contrast to his "beloved 
Crescent City," as he called it, than was offered by 
Princeton ; the opulent little college town, with its 
fine old buildings, libraries, and museums, its distin- 
guished society of resident professors, its shaded streets 
swarming with handsome, happy students. In the old 
days Princeton had been a favourite college with the 
South. In the arrogant spirit of the time, it was con- 



NEW OBLEANS. 381 

sidered aristocratic and the best place North for the 
education of a gentleman's sons, and its rolls had car- 
ried generation after generation of the best families 
from every Southern State. Crowded as were the 
streets of Princeton then, few Southern faces were to 
be met ; from New Orleans it was doubtful if one 
could be found. 

And the old question and exclamation in I'aul 
Tulane's mind had become now a melancholy confes- 
sion, with an addendum. There was no college in New 
Orleans for the education of her boys, and there was no 
money to educate them elsewliere. Had all the reve- 
nues of Louisiana been turned into the public schools 
after the close of the Civil War, it would not have more 
than sufficed for the urgent needs of the moment. 
Besides the white children, there was now another 
entire population of the State, the negroes, to be 
taught, and of these not merely the children, but tlie 
grown men and women, clamouring, in their new free- 
dom, for the school rudiments, the alphabet, spelling- 
book, and arithmetic. But the public schools, with 
the other branches of the state government, had been 
made a factor in politics by the Reconstructionists, 
and with all the millions wrung from the taxpayers to 
meet the misappropriations of factional legislatures, 
a mere pittance had been granted to the cause of 
education. Northern philanthropy came to the rescue 
of the negro race; colleges and universities for their 
benefit, handsomely equipped and well endowed, were 
soon in full operation all over the South. In New 
Orleans two universities were established for them. 
For the whites, there was the shell of the old Uni- 
versity of Louisiana ; and it retained a corporate ex- 



382 NEW ORLEANS. 

istence only through the Schools of Medicine and of 
Law.i 

The School of Medicine, established in 1835, had 
made a brilliant record for itself before the war; not 
only for the ability and distinction of its faculty, but 
for the advantages in practical instruction it offered, 
through its Charity hospital. It maintained itself 
during the war and disorders following the disaster ; 
and now, the only institution of its kind in reach of 
the impoverished students of the Gulf States, over- 
stretched its dimensions and capacity to fulfil the 
demands made upon it. The Law School, founded in 
1817, with a record only less brilliant than the medical 
department, had also survived its trials, to throw open 
its lecture-rooms to a swarm of eager aspirants. The 
Academic department, organized at the same time as 
the Law School, could not, in a community wholly in 
favour of a foreign education for its youth, have had 
other than an apathetic career. Kept up before the 
war only by the strenuous exertion of a few public- 
spirited citizens, it went under completely in the floods 
of war and reconstruction. 

When the Louisianians came into possession of their 
own government again, in an effort to retrieve the 
past and to restore to their children their rightful 
opportunity of education, the Academic department 
was reorganized ; but the State, overloaded with debt, 

' An explanation seems here due to the reader, that a chapter con- 
taining the history of the Charity Hospital, an account of the New 
Orleans Bench and Bar, the return of the Jesuits and their educational 
work in the community, and summary of various charitable insti- 
tutions and libraries, has, for fear of immeasurably prolonging the 
volume, been omitted. 




^ 



:i 



(^ 



NEW ORLEANS. 385 

could do little more than provide a building and a 
poorly paid faculty. The professors, young Southerners 
who had thrown themselves into the \york with the 
zeal and devotion of patriot missionaries, found their 
time and strength more and more hopelessly over- 
matched by the increasing number of students ; who, 
in their brilliant achievements of study, in their noble 
emulation to relieve parental responsibility and retrieve 
their political birthright, were as hue a body of students, 
their professors say, as ever responded to instruction. 
The very fact of their being so overmatched, however, 
fortified the determination and courage of the young 
professors, and they battled strong-heartedly in their 
class-rooms, fighting only for time, only to hold their 
Thermopylae until help should arrive. Their students 
speak of them to-day as the students of the old college 
of Orleans speak of their professors. 

Friends from New Orleans visiting Tulane describe 
the old Creole merchant as a liale, hearty man of medium 
height, Avith broad shoulders, compact figure, shrewd, 
kind face; energetic in speech and nervous in action, 
always sitting on the balcony of his great mansion, or 
walking in his spacious gardens and parks ; and always 
asking questions about his old home and the friends 
left behind. This was his favourite theme of conversa- 
tion ; the city and the people, — going, with the insist- 
ence of the old, over and over the old names and old 
events, with all the comments suggested by his wisdom, 
sympathy, and experience. There was but one answer 
possible to his questions, as the old man himself knew : 
hard times, suffering, and want ; very few, that is, very 
few of the rich citizens of his early days, but were 
engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle for existence j 



386 NEW ORLEANS. 

widows giving lessons, boys and girls put to shop 
work. There were, of course, some rich people, and 
fortunes were still accumulating there ; hut the excep- 
tions only heightened the contrast of the change that 
had come over the others. 

To such a man, it was not the loss of fortune, the 
turning of luxurious aristocrats into wage earners, that 
counted ; it was the apparent hopeless condemnation 
of a proud generation to a penalty of illiteracy from 
which even their former slaves were being reprieved ; 
the depriving the young irrevocably, for lack of money, 
of the only means of preserving their autonomy in the 
face of money and of a money-ruled community. He 
was told of the young professors in their college, hold- 
ing their defile, thinking every moment must end the 
struggle, and he bought the building and presented it 
to them, that, at least, no students should be neglected 
for want of room. This building, selected on account 
of its proximity to the School of Law and Medicine 
and the Academic department, was none other, by 
strange historic coincidence, than the blood-stained 
hall that held the Constitutional Convention of 1868, 
since known as Tulane Hall. And then the thought 
of a university began to work in the only quarter from 
which it seems relief could come to the white youth 
of New Orleans : in the brain of Paul Tulane. Two 
years later, in the spring of 1882, he made his dona- 
tion in the following letter, addressed to a committee of 
gentlemen of the city : — 

" A resident of New Orleans for many years of my active life, 
having formed many friendsliipsand associations there dear to me, 
and deeply sympalhizini;' with its people in whatever misfortunes or 
disasters may have befallen them, as well as being sincerely desir- 



NEW OllLEANS. 387 

ous of contributing to their moral and intellectual welfare, I do 
hereby express to you my intention to donate to you ... all the 
real estate I own and am possessed of in the city of jSTew Orleans 
. . . for the promotion and encouragement of intellectual, moral, 
and industrial education among the white young persons in the 
city of New Orleans . . . for the advancement of leai'ning and 
letters, the arts and sciences." A sudden memory of the old times, 
the gay ante-bellum period, must have occurred to him. "By the 
term education, I mean to foster such a course of intellectiial de- 
velopment as shall be useful and of solid worth, and not merely 
ornamental or superficial. I mean you should adopt the course 
which, as wise and good men, would com mend itself to you as be- 
ing conducive to immediate practical benefit, rather than theoreti- 
cal possible advantage. . . . 

" With devout gratitude to our Heav^Mlly Father, for enabling us 
to form these plans, and invoking his divine blessing upon you and 
your counsels, and upon the good wt)rk proposed among the pres- 
ent and future generations of our beloved Crescent City, I remain 
with great respect, 

" Yoiu' friend and humble servant, 

"Paul Tulank. " 



It was just two centuries and a few weeks from the 
date of La Salle's Prise de Possession and project of 
founding, a city on the banks of the Mississippi. The 
city's grand climacteric may now be said to liave been 
reached, — her history, to have entered a new era. 

The endowment made amounts to one million and 
fifty thousand dollars. By a contract with the State, 
the administrators of the Tulane fund were made the 
administrators of the University of Louisiana, which be- 
came the Tulane University of Louisiana, and as such 
went into organization in ISS-t. After ten years' life in 
the old location, a nobler site has been jjrovided for 
it, opposite the historic grounds of Audubon Park, 
upon which buildings have been erected worthy of the 



388 



NEW ORLEANS. 



purpose and design expressed in the letter of tlieir 
founder. 

The good man lived only long enough to see his 
great gift started on its mission, for it may be said of 
such gifts what Milton said of books, that they "do 
contain a progeny of life in them, to be as active as 
that soul whose progeny they are." 

Following close upon Tulane University, and made 

a department of it, 
came the H. Sophie 
Newcomb College for 
young women, estab- 
lished in 1886 by the 
widow of another suc- 
cessful New Orleans 
merchant. The Rich- 
ardson Medical Build- 
ing, the new home for 
the old medical col- 
lege, commemorates 
fC^xne.^ -^'^-^ I l^''-zh-~ ' the name of a dis- 

' ^ ■ tinguished and hon- 

oured physician and 
professor, and of his 
widow, who erected the building. The Howard Me- 
morial Library, a reference library, making towards a 
rare and most valuable collection of Louisiana l)ibliog- 
raphy, is the pious tribute of a daughter to the mem- 
ory of her father. These are all children of the spirit 
of Paul Tulane. It is only the respectful silence, im- 
posed by the living presence of the donors among us, 
that closes the lips of the eulogist of to-day; the praise, 
however, can safely be confided to the future. 







Uov/fe-fsi Hi tevs-TV 



NEW OB LEANS. 



389 



It was on the last Monday of the carnival, Lundi 
Gras, 1699, you remember, that Iberville made his way 
through the formidable palisades and superstitious ter- 
rors that guarded the mouth of the Mississippi. As he 
lay that evening on the rush-covered bank of the river, 
reposing from his fatigues and adventures, the stars 
coming out overhead, the camp-fires lighted near him, 
the savoury fragrance of supper spreading upon the air, 
he thought, according to his 
journal, of the gay rout going 
on at that moment in Paris, 
and contrasted his day with 
that of his frolicking friends. 
And he exulted in his superior 
pleasure, for he said it was 
gallant work, discovering un- 
known shores in boats that 
were not large enough to 
keep the sea in a gale, and 
yet were too large to land on 
a shelving shore where they 
grounded and stranded a half 
mile out. The next morning, 
on Mardi Gras, he formally took possession of the coun- 
try, and the first name he gave on the Mississippi was 
in honour of the day, to a little stream — Bayou Mardi 
Gras, as it still is printed on the last, as on the first map 
of the region. After such a beginning, and wnth such 
a coincidence of festivals, it is not surprising to find 
traces of Mardi Gras celebrations throughout all the 
early Louisiana chronicles. The boisterous buffoon- 
eries of the gay little garrison at Mobile generally made 
Ash Wednesday a day for military as well as clerical 




390 



NEW ORLEANS. 



discipline, and the same record was maintained in New- 
Orleans. As for New Orleans, it is safe to say that her 
streets saw not the sober qualities of life any earlier 
than the travesty of it, and that since their alignment 
by Pauger, they have never missed their yearly afflu- 
ence of Mardi Gras masks and dominoes; nor from the 
earliest records, have the masks and dominoes missed 
their yearly balls. 

Critical European travellers aver that they recognize 




by a thousand shades in the colouring of the New 
Orleans carnival, the Spanish, rather than the French 
influ'ence, citing as evidence the innocent and respect- 
ful fooleries of street maskers, the dignity of the great 
street parades, the stately etiquette of the large public 
mask balls, the refined intrigue of the private ones. 
These characteristics naturally escape the habituated 
eyes of the natives. The old French and Spanish spirit 
of the carnival has in their eyes been completely de- 



iV^^TT' 0BLEAN8. 391 

stroyed by the innovation of American ideas, as they 
are still called. For it was an American idea to organ- 
ize the carnival, to substitute regular parades for the 
old impromptu mummery in the streets, and to unite 
into two or three great social assemblages the smaller 
public mask balls that were scattered through the sea- 
son, from Twelfth Night to Mardi Gras. The modifi- 
cation was a necessary one in a place where society had 
so rapidly outgrown the limiting surveillance of a resi- 
dent governor and of an autocratic court circle; and 
if much seems to have been lost of the old individual 
exuberance of wit and fun, specimens of which have 
come to us in so many fascinating episodes from the 
always socially enviable past, the gain in preserving at 
least the forms of the old society through the social up- 
heaval and chaos of revolution and civil war has been 
real and important. 

The celebration of Mardi Gras is -an episode that 
never becomes stale to the people of the city, however 
monotonous the description or even the enumeration of 
its entertainments appears to strangers. At any age it 
makes a Creole woman young to remember it as she 
saw it at eighteen ; and the description of what it 
appeared to the eyes of eighteen would be, perhaps, the 
only fair description of it, for if Mardi Gras means any- 
thing, it means illusion ; and unfortunately, when one 
attains one's majority in the legal world, one ceases to 
be a citizen of Phantasmagoria. 

There is a theory, usually bruited by the journals on 
Ash Wednesday morning, that Mardi Gras is a utili- 
tarian festival ; that it pays. But this deceives no one 
in the city. It is assumed, as the sacramental ashes are 
by many, perfunctorily, or merely for moral effect upon 



392 



NEW ORLEANS. 



others, upon those who are committed, by birth or con- 
viction, against pleasure for pleasure's sake. To the 
contrite journalist, laying aside mask and domino, to 
pen such an editorial, it must seem indeed at such a 
time a disheartening fact that money-making is the 
only pleasure in the United States that meets with uni- 
versal journalistic approbation. 

There is a tradition that the royalties of the carnival 
show a no more satisfactory divine right to their thrones 
than other royalties ; that the kings are the heavy con- 
tributors to the organization, and that a queen's claims 





upon the council boards of the realm of beauty are not 
entirely by reason of her personal charm. There is such 
a tradition, but it is never recognized at carnival time, 
and seldom believed by the ones most interested ; never, 
never, by the society neophyte of the season. Ah, no ! 
Comus, Momus, Proteus, the Lord of Misrule, Rex, find 
ever in New Orleans the hearty loyalty of the most un- 
questioned Jacobinism ; and the real mask of life never 
portrays more satisfactorily the fictitious superiority of 
consecrated individualism in European monarchies than, 
in the Crescent City, do these sham faces, the eternal 
youth and beauty of the carnival royalties. 



NEW OELEAlSrS. 393 

There is a tradition that young matrons have recog- 
nized their husbands in their masked cavaliers at balls ; 
and that the Romeo incognito of many a debutante has 
been resolved into a brother, or even (beshrew the sus- 
picion!) a father ; but at least it is not the debutante 
who makes the discovery. Her cavalier is always be- 
yond peradventure her illusion, living in the Elysium 
of her future, as the cavalier of the matron is always 
some no less cherished illusion from the Elysium of the 
past. As it is the desire of the young girl to be the sub- 
ject of these illusions, so it is the cherished desire of the 
young boy to become the object of them. To put on 
mask and costume, to change his personality ; to ligure 
some day in the complimentary colouring of a prince of 
India, or of a Grecian god, or even to ape the mincing 
graces of a dancing girl or woodland nymph ; to appear 
to the inamorata, clouded in the unknown, as the 
ancient gods did of old to simple shepherdesses ; and 
so to excite her imagination and perhaiDS more ; this 
is the counterpart of the young girl's illusions in the 
young boy's dreams. A god is only a man when he is 
in love ; and a man, all a god. 

Utilitarian ! Alas, no ! Look at the children ! But 
they nevertheless have always furnished the sweetest 
delight of Mardi Gras, as Rex himself must acknowl- 
edge from his throne chariot. It is the first note of the 
day, the twittering of the children in the street, the 
jingling of the bells on their cambric costumes. What 
a flight of masquerading butterflies they are ! And 
what fun ! what endless fun for them, too, to mystify, 
to change their chubby little personalities, to hide their 
cherub faces under a pasteboard mask, and run from 
house to house of friends and relations, making people 



394 



NEW ORLEANS. 



guess who they are, and frightening the good-natured 
servants in the kitchen into such convulsions of terror ! 
And they are all going to be Rex some day, as in other 
cities the little children are all going to be President. 

Profitable ! Ah, yes ! Ask the crowd in the street ; 
that human oUa podrida of carelessness, joviality, and 
colour ; more red, blue, and yellow gowns to the block 
than can be met in a mile in any other city of the 
United States. Ask the larking bands of maskers ; 
the strolling minstrels and monkeys ; the coloured 




"|ir«T2>ceuj jHr<M). 



torchbearers and grooms ; Bedouin princes in their 
scarlet tunics and turbans (no travesty this, but the 
rightful costume, as the unmasked, black face testifies). 
Even the mules that draw the cars recognize the true 
profit of the Saturnalian spirit of the carnival, and in 
their gold-stamped caparisons, step out like noble 
steeds of chivalry, despite their ears. 

The day is so beautiful, so beautiful that it is a local 
saying that it never rains on ]\Iardi Gras. It were a 
better saying that it never should rain on Mardi Gras. 

And yet, if it were granted a native in exile to return 



NE[V ORLEANS. 395 

to the city upon but one day of the year, that day 
would be All Saints, le jour des morts^ the home festival 
of the city, for it comes at a season when there are 
few, if any, strangers visiting the place. The deni- 
zens from other regions, without the sentiment of the 
day in their hearts, make it a holiday for out-of-town 
excursions ; hunting parties, country jaunts. They 
have not their dead with them. They do not travel, 
as people of old did, to a new habitation, with the bones 
of their ancestors, to consecrate the spot for them with 
a past, a memory ; to localize it in their lives with a 







octva. 






sentiment instead of a profit. To people of the city, 
the real people of the city, as they like to be called, not 
to observe the day means to have no dead, no ancestors. 
It is heralded well in advance. For a month before 
its advent the bead ex-votos and tissue paper crowns 
hang in the shop windows, and local gossip busies 
itself as to whether the chrysanthemums will bloom 
in time, and what their price will be ; and the dress- 
makers prepare against the annual rush for new 
mourning for the day, as, later on, they prepare 
against the Mardi Gras rush for ball dresses. 



396 NE]V 0BLEAN8. 

The cemeteries, as the day nears, become more like 
cities of the living than of the dead, from the noise, 
bustle, and activity around their dread gates and 
through their solemn pathways, of gardeners, masons, 
and cleaners making ready the tombs for their anni- 
versary. Judgment day itself could not be more ex- 
citingly prepared for. Outside, the banquettes are 
turned into a market place for every requisite of 
sepulchral cleanliness and ornament ; hillocks of sand 
and shell, plants in pots or hampers, flowers in bas- 
kets, trays of plaster images, and, hanging on the wall, 
wreaths, hearts, crosses, and anchors of dried immor- 
telles, artificial roses, or curled, glazed, white, black 
and purple paper. Close along the gutters, the per- 
ambulating refreshment booths are ranged ; and the 
coloured marchandes, in tignons and fichus, with their 
baskets of molasses candy, pralines, and pain-patate — 
all crying their wares at once. 

On the last day of October, the flower venders come, 
filling the banquettes all around the churches and 
markets, securing stations at the corners of the streets, 
where, under the flare of torches, they sell their white 
chrysanthemum crosses, crowns, and baskets late into 
the night. There are never flowers enough, despite 
season, nature, or artifice ; how can there be when 
everybody, even to the beggars, must have some ; for 
even the beggars have their dead somebody to remem- 
ber, their grave somewhere to decorate. By daylight 
of All Saints, the early church-goers say in quaint 
figure of speech, that the city smells like a cemetery, 
meaning the fragrance of it from the flowers every- 
where. 

It is a day that begins very early on account of the 



NEW ORLEANS. 



397 



crowd. The little orphans, under charge of Sisters, or 
Matrons, hasten betimes from their asylums, to take 
their positions inside the gates, behind tables, where 
they chink pieces of silver on plates to remind the 
passing throng that they are orphans and represent a 
double interest in and claim uj)on the day. 

Although the city, on no other occasion, affords to 

4- 







oMb o^tl^ellrsyUyehiuyj 



the eye an assemblage of its populace that can com- 
pare in interest with the concourse in the streets and 
cemeteries on this day, consecrated to memory of the 
dead ; and although there is, also, none so inherently 
appealing to the heart, how can one describe it ? To 
speak of it at all is to speak of it too much. The ex- 
ternal, the obvious features of it, are but as the under- 
taker's paraphernalia to the sentiment of death. The 



398 NEW OliLEANS. 

aged ones, themselves so close to death, white-haired, 
bent-backed, clasping their memorials in palsied hands ; 
the little ones tripping gaily along with carefully 
shielded bouquet ; the inmate from the almshouse hob- 
bling among the pauper graves ; the wrinkled negro 
mammies and uncles with their tokens ; the coloured 
people going to their cemeteries ; the Italians, Spaniards, 
Portuguese, around their gaudily draped mausoleums ; 
— one can only enumerate details like that. 

When De la Tour made the plan of the city, and 
allotted the space for church purposes, he allotted also 
space outside the city ramparts for a cemetery ; and so 
long as the city lived and died Avithin sound of the 
bells of the parish church of St. Louis, this one ceme- 
tery — ■ the old St. Louis cemetery as it is called — 
sufficed. It is the mother cemetery of the city, the 
vieux carrS of the dead ; as confused and closely packed 
a quarter as the living metropolis, whose ghostly coun- 
terpart it is ; with tombs piled in whatever way space 
could be found, and walls lined with tier upon tier of 
receptacles, " ovens " as they are termed in local parlance ; 
the lowest row sunken into a semi-burial themselves, in 
the soft earth beneatho The crumbling bricks of the 
first resting-places built there are ' still to be seen, 
draped over Avith a wild growth of vine, which on sun- 
shiny days are alive with scampering, flashing, green 
and gold lizards. On All Saints a flower could not be 
laid amiss anywhere in this enclosure ; there is not in 
it an inch of earth that has not performed its share of 
kindly hospitality to some bit of humanity. 

Block after block in the rear of the first cemetery 
has been walled in and added to the original enclosure, 
the effort always being made to keep on the outskirts of 



NEW ORLEANS. 399 

habitations. But the great continuous immigration 
of the "flush" times ever extending the limits of the 
city, the outskirts of one decade grew into populous 
centres of the next, and the cemeteries became enisled 
in the dwellings of the living. 

The festival of the dead might be called the festival 
of the history of the city. Year after year from under 
their decorations of evergreens and immortelles, roses 
and chrysanthemums, the tombstones recall to the All- 
Saints pilgrims the names and dates of the past ; identi- 
fying the events with the sure precision of geological 
strata. On them are chronicled the names of the French 
and Canadian first settlers ; the Spanish names and 
Spanish epitaphs of that domination; the names of the 
einiyrSs from the French revolution ; from the different 
West Indian islands ; the names of the refugees from 
Napoleon's army ; the first sprinkling of American 
names ; and those interesting English names that tell 
how the wounded prisoners of Pakenham's army j)re- 
ferred remaining in the land of their captivity, to 
returning home. The St. Louis cemetery for the col- 
oured people unfolds the chapter of the coloured immi- 
gration, and by epitaph and name furnishes the links 
of their history. 

The first Protestant cemetery (very far out of the 
city in its day, now in the centre) bears the name of 
the French Protestant mayor and philanthropist, Nicolas 
Girod. It belongs to the Faubourg Ste. Marie period, 
and in it are found the names of the pioneers of her 
enterprise ; of the first great American fortune makers, 
the first great political leaders, the brilliant doctors of 
law, medicine, and divinity, who never have died from 
the memory of the place. In it is to be found the tomb 
2d 



400 NEW OBLEANS. 

of that beautiful woman and charming actress, Miss 
Placicle, with the poetical epitaph written for her by 
Caldwell ; the lines which everj^ woman in society in 
New Orleans, fifty years ago, was expected to know and 
repeat. The Mexican war is commemorated in it by a 
monument to one of the heroes and victims. General 
Bliss. The great epidemics make their entries year 
after year ; pathetic reading it is ; all young, strong, 
and brave, according to their epitaphs, and belonging 
to the best families. The epidemics of '52 and '53 date 
the opening of new cemeteries, in which the lines of the 
gliastly trenches are still to be traced. 

The Metairie cemetery (transformed from the old 
race track) contains the archives of the new era — after 
the civil war and the reconstruction. In it are Con- 
federate monuments, and the tombs of a grandeur sur- 
passing all previous local standards. As the saying is, 
it is a good sign of prosperity when the dead seem to 
be getting richer. 

The old St. Louis cemetery is closed now. It opens 
its gates only at the knock of an heir, so to speak; 
gives harbourage only to those who can claim a resting- 
place by the side of an ancestor. Between All Saints 
and All Saints, its admittances are not a few, and the 
registry volumes are still being added to ; the list of 
names, in the first crumbling old tome, is still being 
repeated, over and over again ; some of them so old and 
so forgotten in the present that death has no oblivion 
to add to them. Indeed, we may say they live only in 
the death register. 

Not a year has gone by since, on a January day, one 
of the bleakest winter days the city had known for 
half a century, a file of mourners followed one of the 



NEW ORLEANS. 401 

city's oldest children, and one of the cemetery's most 
ancient heirs, to his last resting-place by the side of 
a grandfather. The silver crucifix gleamed fitfully 
ahead, appearing and disappearing as it led the way 
in the maze of irregularly built tombs, through path- 
ways, hollowed to a furrow, by the footsteps of the 
innumerable funeral processions that had followed the 
dead since the first burials there. The chanting of 
the priests winding in and out after the crucifix, fell on 
the ear in detached fragments, rising and dropping 
as the tombs closed in or opened out behind them. 
The path, with its sharp turns, was at times impassa- 
ble to the coffin, and it had to be lifted above the tombs 
and borne in the air, on a level with the crucifix. With 
its heavy black draperies, its proportions in the grey 
humid atmosphere appeared colossal, magnified, and 
transfigured with the ninety-one years of life inside. 
It was Ciiarles Gayarre being conveyed to the tomb of 
M. de Bore, the historian of Louisiana making his last 
bodily appearance on earth — in the corner of earth he 
had loved so well and so poetically. 

Woman and mother as she ever appeared in life to 
the loving imagination of her devoted son, it was but 
fittinef that New Orleans should herself head the file of 
mourners and weep bitterly at the tomb ; for that she 
lives at all in that best of living worlds, the world of 
history, romance, and poetry, she owes to him whom 
brick and mortar were shutting out forever from human 
eyes. As a youth, he consecrated his first ambitions to 
her ; through manhood, he devoted his pen to her ; 
old, suffering, bereft by misfortune of his ancestral 
heritage, and the fruit of his prime's vigour and indus- 
try, he yet stood ever her courageous knight, to defend 



402 NEW ORLEANS. 

her against the aspersions of strangers, the slanders of 
traitors. He lield her archives not only in his memory 
but in his heart, and while he lived, none dared make 
public aught about her history except with his vigilant 
form in the line of vision. 

The streets of the vieux carre, through which he 
gambolled as a schoolboy, and through which his hearse 
had slowly rolled ; the cathedral in which he was bap- 
tized, and in which his requiem was sung ; and the old 
cemetery, the resting-place of his ancestors, parents, 
and forbears, and the sanctuary in which his imagina- 
tion ever found inspiration and courage — they gave 
much to his life ; but his life gave also much to them. 
And the human eyes looking out through their sadness 
of personal bereavement from the carriages of the 
funeral cortege, saw in them a thousand signs (accord- 
ing to the pathetic fallacy of humanity) of like sadness 
and bereavement. 

Thus it is, that one beholden to him for a long life's 
endowment of affection, help, and encouragement, 
judges it meet that a chronicle begun under his aus- 
pices, to which he contributed so richly from his mem- 
ory, and of whose success he was so tenderly solicitous, 
should end, as it began, with a tribute to his memory 
and name. 







Works by Mrs. Oliphant. 

THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE: 

DANTE, GIOTTO, SAVONAROLA, AND THEIR CITY. 

With illustrations from Drawings by Professor Delamotte, and a Steel Por- 
trait of Savonarola engraved by C. H. JEENS. New and Cheaper Editions, 
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HARVARD COLLEGE BY AN OXONIAN. 



By GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L., 

Pembroke College, Oxford; Editor of " Boswell's Life of Johnson"; 
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The accomplished and scholarly editor of Boswell's Johnson, Dr. G. 
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England — The College Chapel — P"agging and " Hazing " — Odd Charac- 
ters — After-dinner Speeches — Class-day — The Athletic Craze — Signs 
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THE WRITINGS 



OF 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



" Taken altogether he has in tny Judgment no equal." 

— Lord Coleridge, 



JUST PUBLISHED. 

The Letters of Matthew Arnold, 

1848-1888. 

COLLECTED AND ARRANGED 

BY 

GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL. 
2 vols. Crown 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. 



The task of collecting and arranging these letters was undertaken in 
obedience to the wish of Mrs. Matthew Arnold, and of her sister-in-law, 
Mrs. Foster, and Miss Arnold of Fo.\ Howe. Matthew Arnold maintained 
a constant correspondence with members of his family, and from that cor- 
respondence most of these letters have been taken, but several of great 
interest and value have been added by the kindness of friends and acquaint- 
ances. (From the Editor's Preface.) 



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ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 



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kept more faithfully in view his own definition of the 
business of the critical power ' in all branches of 
knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, 
to see the object as in itself it really is,' or exercised 
that power with a more fascinating clearness, a more 
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ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 

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PRESS NOTICES. 

"Some of his ripest, best and most interesting 
writing." — N. V. Observer. 

" Qualities of the poet's soul are understood by the 
critic in full measure, and his elegance of style adds 
to the beauty of the interpretation. In these essays, 
Matthew Arnold will find a longer remembrance than 
in any of his controversial writings. They are up- 
lifting and masterly." — Boston Journal. 

"All of these have the same high quality which 
marked the critical work of their distinguished author, 
and many of them embody his ripest and richest 
thought."— 77^^ Week. 



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LITERATURE AND DOGMA, 

AN ESSAY TOWARDS A BETTER APPREHENSION 
OF THE BIBLE. 



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incisive use of English, and his attitude towards revealed 
religion, . . . with many noble thoughts expressed in memora- 
ble sentences." — Zion's Herald. 



GOD AND THE BIBLE. 

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AND DOGMA.' 

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quarters excite, could not but be present to my mind. I hope, 
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most suspicious. Some of the comments on ' Literature and 
Dogma' did, I own, surprise me; . . . but however that judg- 
ment may go, whether it pronounce the attempt here made to 
be of solid worth or not, I have little fear but that it will recog- 
nize it to have been an attempt conservative and an attempt 
religious." — From the Author'' s Preface. 



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ON THE STUDY OF CELTIC 
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text in which they appear, and are worthy of frequent 
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antholosrical treatment." — Evcnins: Post. 



St. Paul and Protestantism. 

LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. 
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— Boston Traveler. 



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MIXED ESSAYS, 

IRISH ESSAYS. 



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He is a deep, careful thinker, and deals with the 
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sideration from all readers. In his Irish essays he 
considers the whole Irish question in a very candid, 
philosophical manner." — Boston Post. 

" Written in the Essayist's most delightful style, and 
would repay perusal simply by the pleasure there is in 
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topics discussed." — Boston Journal. 



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DISCOURSES IN AMERICA. 



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— Brooklyn Union. 

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and intellectual justice will be disappointed in his 
' Discourses.' " — Boston Beacon. 

" Every sentence is a text for thought." 

— Toledo Post. 

" Fresh, outspoken and sincere ; and if one does 
not always agree with them in all points, one can yet 
take pleasure in them." — Churchtnan. 

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delightful reading." — Argonaut. 

" Treasures — the best thought in the choicest Eng- 
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POETICAL WORKS. 

IN 3 VOLS. 



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" Matthew Arnold's poetry is essentially the poetry 
of the scholar, and it is, we may say, poetry for the 
scholar ; . . . his poems certainly belong among the 
finest of the century, and will last so long as good 
poetry is read and enjoyed." — The Critic. 

" One of the best and wisest writers of our age . . . 
Arnold's poetry reminds one somewhat of Emerson's. 
Its lofty intellectuality takes us, as it were, to the clear, 
rare atmosphere of a high mountain peak whence we 
can look down on the comings and goings on earth 
and see things in their true relations and light." 

— Chicago Tribune. 

" No other poet of the age has expressed with more 
perfect truth or greater beauty of form the thoughts and 
the feelings that lie deepest in the souls of thoughtful 
men." — Dial. 



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THE WORKS OF WALTER PATER. 



PLATO AND PLATONISM, 

A Series of I^ectures. 

By WALTER PATER, M.A. 
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from the nature of Pater's genius, he has much to say on the /Es- 
thetics of Plato — in fact, it is this side of Plato, as above remarked, 
that offers most attraction to the author. In Plato he finds the first 
philosopher who speculated at all about the beautiful. So it is as 
an art lover that Pater comes to Plato, and it is this side of Plato's 
philosophy that receives most attention at the hands of the author. 
One is very glad, too, to have so masterly and sympathetic a spirit 
to interpret for us this aspect of Platonism. Jowett's Introductions 
have done much, but we have no volume which sets forth in such 
clear and charming way the literary, aesthetic, and political features 
of this philosophy." — Philosophical Review. 



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THE WORKS OF WALTER PATER. 



IMAGINARY PORTRAITS. 

By WALTER PATER, 

Fellow of Brasenose College. 

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in the rendering of what he sees, which lie at the heart of Mr. 
Pater's literary individuality, and give to his style its extraordinary 
distinction, lift the work out of the range of the common, and set it 
apart as unique with his other work, to the refined thoughtfulness of 
which we have hitherto endeavored to do some justice." — Nation. 

" The portraits are of incomparable perfection and beauty, and 
are educational of art and literary taste." — Boston Globe. 

" Whatever his subject-matter, the mere flow of his words and 
sentences has the enchanting power of a richly musical voice. His 
command of the qualities of grace and beauty in English prose 
seems to us seldom to have been equalled. . . . We do not know 
of another fiction-writer of to-day — certainly not more than one — 
who would do such purely artistic work in the line of drawing char- 
acters of a bygone day." — Critic. 

" Mr. Walter Pater is one of the few — the very few — living Eng- 
lish authors who have never published anything which the most 
fastidious lover of pure literature cannot read with pleasure as well 
as profit, and to which he is not certain to return in his leisure hours 
for a renewal of that pleasure." — Alail and Express. 

" It is impossible to make adequate extracts from such a book as 
this. It is full of the finest insights into life and art; of pictures and 
suggestions; of delicate fancies so harmoniously strung that the 
reading is like the passing of exquisite music." — Boston Traveller. 



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THE WORKS OF WALTER PATER. 



THE RENAISSANCE: 

Studies in Art and Poetry 

By WALTER PATER, 

Fellow of Brasenose College. 

Third Edition. Revised and Enlarged. Globe 8vo. $2.00. 



This edition has been carefully revised and, to some 
extent, enlarged. The ' Conclusion,' which was omitted 
from the second edition, has now been replaced with some 
slight changes which bring it closer to the author's original 
meaning. 

"The appearance of Mr. Pater's Essays — one of the most char- 
acteristic and epoch-marking books of our day — in a third edition 
is a welcome proof of the power of good Hterature to win its way in 
the long run, however remote and unfamiliar its form may be. The 
text has been touched here and there in the successive remaniments 
which it has undergone, but Mr. Pater has been wisely careful to 
lay no irreverent hands upon cadences which linger in the memo- 
ries of many readers of that beloved first edition, with its deep- 
ribbed, hand-made paper, and dark green cover. Such a reader 
will turn to the well-known passage on Lionardo's Mona Lisa, and 
will come under the old charm with great satisfaction. It is of 
course possible to have different opinions about a style so studied, 
so subtle, and so minutely wrought, but no one who can taste books 
at all will fail to feel its charm, while no student of art can turn over 
the essays on Botticelli and The School of Gior^ione and Winckel- 
inaiui without seeing how deep a mark Mr. Pater has left on the 
best criticism of our day." — Manchester Guardian. 

"Among English authors who have identified themselves with the 
modern art movement in England, no one holds a higher position 
than Mr. Walter Pater, a thorough scholar, a man of strong artistic 
feeling, trained in literature as well as in art history. Mr. Pater has 
brought to the work of expressing some modern English ideas in 
art all the resources of a gifted and accomplished writer. In his 
delightful volume on the Renaissance he discloses many of those 
■qualities which characterize what has been called modern pre- 
Raphaelite art." — Christian Unio?i. 



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THE WORKS OF WALTER PATER 



APPRECIATIONS, 

"With ail Essay on Style. 

By WALTER PATER, M.A. 

Globe 8vo. Cloth. $1.75. 

" Will charm by the beauty of its literary workmanship, as well as 
by the depth and fineness of its criticism." — Boston Saturday Even- 
ing Gazette. 

" They will be read with interest as a finished expression of the 
opinions of one of the most earnest and widely cultured of living 
English critics." — St. yaiiies' Gazette. 

" He has something to say; he says it in English undefiled, and 
his sentences caress the ear, and linger like music in the memory. 
But, in addition to these, he has another gift, to the last degree indi- 
vidual — lie has the power of illumination. In a single phrase he 
flashes a new light on the subject he is discussing, and yet what 
he says is so inevitable that we all wonder we have not thought of 
it before." — Boston Herald. 



MARIUS, THE EPICUREAN: 

His Sensations and Ideas. 

By WALTER PATER, M.A. 
Second Edition. Globe 8vo. $2.25. 

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and, after all, only the fitting and adequate expression of the exact- 
est thinking." — Afkeiia;um. 

"Any one who cares to think on counsels of perfection for man's 
life will find profound and original thought about the ideal elements 
still at hand in modern days for use, and many wise reflections, 
sown along these pages. It is a rare work and not carelessly to be 
read. Some exquisiteness of taste, some delight in schoiaiship, 
some knowledge of what is best worth knowing in the historic ex- 
pressions of man's aspiration, and, aljove all, that ' inward tacitness 
of mind' the reader must bring to its perusal." — Nation. 

"The polish of the style, the depth and refinement of the thought, 
the picturesque descriptions, and the lofty sentiment of the book as 
a whole, together with the beautiful gravity and impressiveness that 
mark it generally, make it a work far out of the ordinary current of 
fiction." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 



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THE WORKS OF WALTER PATER. 



GREEK STUDIES. 



BY 

WALTER PATER, 

Fello7v of Brasenose College. 
Globe 8vo. $1.75. 

" These essays appear to fall into two distinct groups^ 
one dealing with the subjects of Greek mythology and 
Greek poetr)^, and the other is the history of Greek sculpt- 
ure and architecture. The author was a consummate 
master of style, and the essays are as perfect in literary 
form as they are replete with information." 

— Indianapolis Journal. 

" Nowhere in literature does the idea of Greek art seem 
more intimate than through these papers, or is a reader 
more flatteringly induced into a belief in his extraordinary 
perspicacity in divining the meaning of the remnants of 
the ancient world." — T/ie Scotsman. 

'' These essays are not only examples of the author's 
literary grace, but of the seriousness of his studies and 
the fine penetration of his genius." — PhiladelpJiia Press. 



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5 



